


The Price of Belonging

by Kitsfics



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Based on the book White Oleander, Coming of Age, Depression, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, F/M, Foster Care, Menstruation, Modern Era, Modern Westeros, Murder, Racism/bigotry, Roose Bolton (minor character), Self-Harm, So much angst, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Underage Sex, Victim Blaming, White Oleander AU, handjob, sex worker slurs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:54:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26323714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsfics/pseuds/Kitsfics
Summary: After Ned Stark's murder, Sansa's mother Catelyn transforms almost overnight into a hard, cruel woman, bent on seeking her own vengeance, no matter the cost to her family. The murder of Catelyn's oldest son Robb drives her further over the edge. After Catelyn murders a member of the Frey family who murdered her son, Sansa and her sister and brothers and plunged into the foster-care system. Soon separated, Sansa finds herself struggling to tread water in a cold, faceless system that treats her more like a commodity than a person. As she grows into a young woman, she comes to first pity, then condemn, then understand the actions of her mother as she is moved from family to family, enduring unique hardships at each house. Will she ever be able to forgive her mother for the violent actions that drove her family apart? Will she ever be able to feel safe again?
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark, Oberyn Martell/Sansa Stark, Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark, Sansa Stark & Margaery Tyrell
Comments: 14
Kudos: 52





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on one of my favorite novels, White Oleander by Janet Fitch. As you might have guessed from the tags, this is not a happy story. I will always tag chapters to let you know when some of the big warnings are coming up.
> 
> If anyone has read the book and wants to remind me of any big warnings I've left out, please feel free. Also, the Explicit tag is for things like graphic violence and drug use. I will *not* be explicitly describing the underage sex. This is not something I've ever written before, and while I respect its place in the story, I do not condone it at all.
> 
> There will also be some hefty doses of victim blaming, towards Sansa Stark. I will flag where appropriate. Please remember that the characters are victim-blaming Sansa Stark, I am not blaming her at all. She is a child having sexual relationships with adults, and therefore she is not the responsible party. That said, a lot of people are going to hold her accountable as if she were an adult. I cannot emphasize enough how far from my own feelings those statements are. So please, if you want to comment about those victim-blaming statements, just keep in mind I didn't say them, the characters did, and it's super shitty. Feel free to call that out, but please be kind to me and don't blame me for what they say.
> 
> If you're still here after all those warnings, then buckle up. I think this will be an interesting journey. Sansa Stark will come out the other side, and we'll see how changed she is by her ordeal. Thanks in advance for any comments or constructive criticism you want to give me.

When I think of my mother, I always try to remember what she was like before my father’s death. Once, she was soft, with just a hint of the steel beneath the flesh. You could push her too far. She was not a woman for enforcing bedtimes or checking homework, that was always Father’s duty. But when she said it was time for bed, there was no pleading, no negotiating. The hard look would come into her eyes, and you knew she would never waver. Her mind was made up. That was that.

After my father was murdered, all that softness seemed to leach out of her, like the color from a painting left too long in the sun. All that was left was bone and anger. She never spoke of the beauty of the world anymore, only it’s cruelty. She didn’t paint for years after it happened.

Then one morning she did. I remembered being so excited when I woke up and heard her in the studio next to my bedroom. I grinned at the ceiling as I pushed back the covers, shoved my feet into slippers and ran to the doorway to see what she was painting.

My spirits quickly iced over when I saw the painting over her shoulder: a canvas drenched in red paint around the edges. In the center was a self-portrait, only the madwoman in the painting could never look anything like my mother, I thought. The woman in the painting seemed to be cackling as she drew a knife across her own throat, letting loose jets of arterial blood. She was utterly, maniacally happy.

Mother turned and saw me standing there just as a few, involuntary tears slipped down my cheeks. She’d never painted anything like this before. Her paintings were wonderful, and melancholy. I remember when she painted me, looking into a mirror. You couldn’t see the reflection, just my face, but she told me that I was seeing myself as a grown woman, looking into my own future. And the expression on my face, bittersweet regret that was far too complicated an expression to ever grace my ten-year old self, I knew she must have copied it from her own face. It made me sad, to think that if I had been faced with a mirror’s reflection of my future self, I would look so disappointed and at the same time enchanted and awed. Now I know my mother was right.

She reached out her hand to me, and I came forward mechanically, let her wrap her arms around me and hold me to her breast, my head tucked under her chin as she stroked my hair.

“Don’t cry,” she scolded, though her voice was softer than her words. “We’re special, remember?”

A kind of warmth stole into her voice, but it held all of the comfort of a gas stove.

“We have the blood of the First Men, remember? We’re warriors, survivors. When the Southron lordlings invaded, we ambushed and slew them, hung their bodies from the trees.”

I looked up at her, awed as always by her stern beauty, hair dark auburn that in the right light looked like holocaust flames, cheekbones like knives, eyes deep sapphire, fathomless oceans where monsters lurked.

“We were built to endure, Sansa. We may bend the knee, but we will never submit. We will never give them the satisfaction of our tears.”

The earnestness of her voice, the kind of frosty certainty of the insane, scared me. We were already too far in, however. I didn’t know it yet, but the bottom was rapidly rising up to meet me.   
  


It began with a knock on the door, stern and insistent. It quickly elevated to a hammering. I sat up in my bed, looked across the room at Arya. Her face must have mirrored mine, round eyes still full of sleep, her short hair tousled. Any other morning I would have teased her for her bed-head. Today we stared at each other in horror as the door to our little house burst open, men’s voices shouting “Police!”

I rocketed from my bed and went to the door of the little room I shared with Arya. Across the hall, I saw the door open to my brother’s room, Bran standing, staring glass-eyed at the men who had swarmed into our home. We crowded out into the hallway, Arya, Bran, and little Rickon, only four years old, staring through the bars of the balcony at the men in the living room on the first floor below us.

A man looked up at us, as a few officers looked around, bored, listless expressions on their blank faces. He was the only one not in police uniform, wearing a different kind of uniform, a dark, cheap suit. His eyes sought me out, cold blue flecks.

“Where is your mother?”

I hesitated, torn between protecting my mother and obeying authority.

“Don’t tell that pig anything,” Arya hissed.

“Down the hall,” Bran’s thin, young voice piped in. “First door on the left.”

The man, I would learn later that he was a detective, smirked and motioned lazily to the officers, his eyes never leaving my face. “Stay upstairs.”

He disappeared from my view, following the hallway to my mother’s room. Arya was glaring at Bran, who shrugged.

“They would have found her anyway.”

They pulled her from her bed, the neck of her robe flapping open, exposing the curve of her breast. She fought against the officers, feeble attempts to free her hands from the man holding them behind her. She turned her face up to the second floor balcony, where her children were huddled together, soon to be flotsam in an unfeeling world.

“They can’t keep me,” she called up to us, speaking over the officer telling her in a rote voice that she had the right to remain silent. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

The officers left, pushing my mother before them. The man left last, eyes hard and cold upon my face. I shivered.

“What should we do?” I heard myself ask. I felt Arya bristle beside me, and heard myself through her ears, how needy and weak I sounded.

“Oh, someone should be along soon, I’d imagine.” His voice was cool and even, professional-sounding, but his cold eyes never left mine, seemed to bore into my skull, see all parts of me, leaving me feeling naked and exposed. Then he turned on his heel and left, the kicked-in door swinging closed behind him, hanging unnaturally on its hinges.

Arya turned and went back into her room. I told Bran and Rickon to get dressed. Arya was already tying her shoelaces when I returned, leaving me feeling woefully inadequate in my thin nightgown. She had dressed in a pair of jeans and a jumper, glancing at me dismissively before turning to our closet and pulling out a knapsack. She went to her dresser and opened the drawers, packing the bag full of socks, small clothes, warm layers, and an extra pair of shoes.

“Do you have any money?” she asked, wrapping the few pieces of expensive jewelry that she never wore in a handkerchief, then knotting the corners and tucking the bundle into the bottom of her bag. She found Needle in her sock and small clothes drawer, pulled the small, thin knife from the sheath, then drove it back home into the protective leather. She lifted up her jumper, slid the sheathed knife into the waistband of her jeans.

“What are you doing?” I asked, voice tremulous and uncertain. When Arya looked at me, I saw only pity and regret in her glance.

“You know what’s going to happen to us now, Sansa. We’ll be sent out to foster care.”

I felt myself shaking my head. “No. Mother said she’ll be back.”

Arya scoffed, fastening her bag. “You believe that? You know what she did. She’s going to jail. And we’ll be orphans.”

“She’ll still be alive. We’re not orphans if she’s still alive.”

Arya smirked. “Technically. In practice, we’re orphans. I’m not sticking around to see what foster hell we get sent to. You should leave too.”

“What about us? What about the boys?”

Arya glanced at the door, where Bran and Rickon stood. Bran looked much younger than his tender ten years, and Rickon leaned back against him, tears filling his eyes. They looked so much like Father, they all did. I was the only one who inherited our mother’s red hair, blue eyes, pale skin and lithe slender limbs. My siblings all had dark hair, brown or grey eyes, ruddy skin, sturdy bodies.

For a brief moment, I thought Arya might be fighting back tears, but her voice came out hard as flint. “I’m sorry, Bran. But I can’t take you with me. And I can’t stay.”

Bran blinked, his eyes also dry. “I know.”

Arya brushed past him, gently, her hand lingering for a moment on his shoulder. I heard her rummage around in Mother’s room, presumably looking for money, because she came back out and stood in the living room, counting out a stack of twenty-dollar bills. Mother didn’t believe in banks. There was a modest savings account, Sansa knew, from when Father was handling the finances, but Mother always dealt in cash, when selling her paintings, when paying the rent.

Arya counted out half of the money, left it on the coffee table, folded the rest and tucked it into the cuff of her boot, tying the laces a bit tighter to secure the cash.

“Keep that safe. Don’t let anyone see how much it is.” She hoisted the knapsack over one shoulder, looked up at us. I think I’ll remember the look on her face forever: sad, but resolute.

“Goodbye.” And she was gone.

I returned to my bedroom, dressing quickly in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I packed as well, filling a suitcase with my clothes, while Bran packed up clothes for himself and Rickon. I went into Mother’s room next, stood in the center of the room, remembering when it used to be my parents’ room. It had always been neat and tidy, my father’s influence. My mother had no time for household chores, but back then, we employed a part-time housekeeper, and Father saw to the day-to-day tidying up. Now the room was a mess, clothes strewn about. It was Arya’s chore to do laundry, and she always put it off until every last sock had been worn, and Mother let her.

I gathered up a few of Mother’s belongings to take with me. A beautiful white silk robe, a hand-knit shawl of delicate rose-colored lace, Mother’s silver-backed hairbrush that had been a wedding gift from Father. Mother had some jewelry too, I followed Arya’s lead and tied it into a handkerchief. In Mother’s studio, I found her sketchbooks, and packed as many as I could into a tote bag. The bags were placed by the front door. We were ready.

We waited in the kitchen. I made an elaborate breakfast, pancakes and scrambled eggs, toast and good, strong English Breakfast tea with thick cream. The boys picked at their food at first, but necessity soon won over feeling, and they tucked into their food with good appetites. Was that the last time we were truly happy, in the kitchen of our childhood home? Looking at their faces, slightly sticky with syrup and jam, I couldn’t see the future, and I wouldn’t have wanted to. Facing an unknown future, I chose instead to spend the last real hours of my childhood in our warm and cozy kitchen, the cleanest part of the house because I kept it.

When the social worker arrived, however, reality came crashing down.


	2. Limbo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa, Bran, and Rickon's fate hangs in the balance of Catelyn Stark's trial.

The social worker was a nice enough woman, old and thin, her skin like paper. She introduced herself as Septa Mordane, and her glance was not unkind. She shook off all of our questions, told us to pack, looked pleased when I told her we already had.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as we followed her like frightened ducklings out to the living room. I had already secured the money in my suitcase, and I was grateful Arya had been practical enough to think of it. Who knew what would happen to the house if Mother was convicted? I wished more than ever that Robb was there.

Bran helped me load the bags into the back of the social worker’s van. I took one long look at the house before we left. I knew it would be a long time before I saw it again.

The drive wasn’t long, but long enough to get bored. I entertained Rickon with a game of I Spy. “I spy with my little eye, something brown,” Rickon said with a giggle, staring at Bran then trying to pretend he hadn’t been.

I laughed and rolled my eyes, made a few feeble guesses like the ground, the Septa’s shoes, a chocolate eclair. Rickon giggled with every wrong guess, then nodded happily when I finally guessed correctly: Bran’s hair. I reached over and tousled Rickon’s own chocolate curls.

“We’re here,” the septa announced, and I turned to look out of the window at a depressingly ordinary building, one floor. It almost looked like a small school, like an elementary or something. But all the windows had bars on them. The septa led us inside, with Bran and I carrying our bags. She stopped at the front desk, instructing us to sit and wait while she filled out some paperwork to check us in.

I didn’t have the heart to entertain Rickon this time. I sat with him on my lap, and eventually he dozed off. I tried to keep the tears out of my eyes. I kept hearing my mother’s voice, telling me not to cry, that we were Northmen, with the blood of the First Men in our veins.

It seemed to take forever for someone from the facility to come get us. Septa gave me a comforting smile, but it felt like an empty courtesy, something that cost nothing and gave no actual comfort. The septa turned away quickly and walked back outside, while a man in a brown security guard’s uniform waited impatiently for us to gather our things and follow him.

He waved to another guard behind the metal-embedded bullet-proof window and two staff members came out, dressed in plain black slacks and blue polos, with names like Brad and Cameron. They took our bags, and the guard beckoned to us.

“Come on kids, it ain’t that bad in here. Nothing to be scared of.”

Bran and I each took one of Rickon’s hands and followed the guard.

“You’re lucky,” Brad said as we followed him down a hallway with doors on either side. “We had an empty room, so you’ll get to stay together.”

“For how long?” Bran asked. I found myself wishing he had just stayed quiet.

“Till they find you a permanent placement,” Brad replied as they stopped outside a door. Cameron unlocked the door. “A permanent home, I mean.”

_ The first one was right, _ I thought to myself. Brad left the bags on a bed, there were two sets of bunk-beds. Cameron pointed out the bathroom at the end of the hall.

“Lunch is in half an hour. Stay in your room until we come get you.”

And with that we were alone. Rickon tried to claim a top bunk, but I objected. “You’ll fall out in the middle of the night. You and I will take the bottom bunks.”

I wouldn’t let myself unpack, but I did remove a few things, my sketchbook, toiletries, my everyday hairbrush. Rickon was all energy, now that he’d gotten a little nap. I unpacked a few of his toys, and let him play on his bed, making little  _ vroom, vroom  _ noises as a truck climbed over his bedspread and pillow, performing impossible jumps and flips.

I sat down on my bed, leaned back against the wall that the bunk-bed stood against. I tried not to worry, but it was all I could think about: when would Mother come back? What would happen to us if she didn’t?

Another pleasant-looking young man in a blue polo shirt came in soon and told us to follow him down to lunch.

The cafeteria was not busy. I had been nervous at first about what type of kids would be in a facility like this, but I was relieved to see they were a fairly quiet and orderly bunch. Everyone kept to themselves, there wasn’t much talking amongst the children, who ranged in ages from Rickon’s age to sixteen or seventeen. Most were young though, and many looked fairly shell-shocked.

I helped Rickon with his tray of food, then left him with Bran to go back and get my own dinner. It was the most bizarre thing, sitting in that cafeteria of lost children, feeling a little bit like the Island of Misfit Toys, and at the same time, it was so normal, so mundane. The plastic trays were the exact same kind they had used at my middle school. There was a mural on the wall, a bunch of ethnically diverse children playing, frozen in an eternal snapshot of Ring around the Poesy, a song about the Plague.

I think the next few days might have been very different, if I hadn’t had Bran and Rickon. I noticed a few girls my age who were alone, and they spent most of their time sleeping, it seemed. Clear signs of depression. But with the boys near me, I didn’t have time to be sad, to think about the future. Everything I did was to keep them occupied, keep them happy, Rickon more than Bran. Bran soon became a co-conspirator in my play-acting. He refused to lie, but he no longer contradicted me when I reassured Rickon that we were going to go home very soon.

I turned out to be more right than either of us would have guessed, in a way.

_ Robb came to visit us on the day he turned sixteen, and Mother roused herself from her perpetual miasma to celebrate with as much gusto as she coil muster. She was still sad after Father’s death, she called it her “low days”, but would try to maintain a cheerful front for Robb. I would have been jealous and resentful if I didn’t love Robb more than anyone else in the world. _

_ He always had a smile for me, and usually a hug. He stayed out a lot now, which any normal mother would have put a stop to, but for all of Mother’s stern demeanor and hard-line, never-budge stances, she made no pretense to authority. It was why the house was always a mess, she never actually ordered anyone to do any chores. So everything fell on me. _

_ Robb would try to help out when he was home, and could even get Arya and Bran to help out. Within a few hours of his visits, the house would be back in some semblance of order. He would even go so far as to admonish Bran and Arya, to help with the chores when he was away, but everyone knew they never would. _

_ On the day Robb turned sixteen, I baked him a cake while he sat at the kitchen table, “testing” my batter until I scolded him that there would be nothing left to bake. I took the bowl back, which he had stolen while I was greasing the cake pans, and gave him a playful swat on the shoulder. _

_ “How is Mother?” Robb asked while I had my back turned, pouring batter into the pans. I was grateful for that, that he had waited until my face was hidden from him to ask. I never was a very good liar, and Robb could read my face like a book. _

_ “She’s fine, I guess. She has bad days still, but nothing too bad.” Such an obvious lie. She had days where she didn’t get out of bed, where I had to coax her into drinking some tea and swallowing down a few pieces of bread. The weight had fallen off of her in the years since Father’s death, until she was all sharp bones and angles. Then the days where she wouldn’t- couldn’t- stop painting, painting for days and days, strange, surreal paintings, mostly color and amorphous shapes, very different from her usual realistic style. _

_ “Are the munchkins helping you around the house any?” _

_ I grinned as I put the pans in the oven, letting the door slide shut after. “Of course not!” I took the bowl and the spoon and sat down next to him at the table. I gave him the bowl, but kept the spoon, licking the thick chocolate batter. Chocolate was Robb’s favorite. _

_ “What do you do when you’re not home?” I asked him, and suddenly wished I hadn’t. His face closed like a book. He didn’t seem angry, just cagey and evasive. _

_ He shrugged, picking up the bowl and carrying it to the sink to rinse. “School, friends, the usual.” _

_ I could tell he was lying, but I had no time to say anything. Mother burst into the house, calling Robb’s name, grinning like a schoolgirl. She called him outside, and we all followed, to see the car she had bought for his birthday, a tiny little piece of junk that Robb crowed over like it was a brand-new sports car. Mother looked on, proud and pleased as Robb climbed in and started the engine. We all piled in for a quick drive around the block, Mother in the front seat, Arya, Bran and I in the back, with Rickon on our laps, only three years old. _

_ It was the last time I remembered us all together, and happy. _

The trial was a sham. They accused Mother of poisoning a member of the Frey family- gang, more like- that had been involved in Robb’s death. No one had ever been charged in his death, but he was found deep in their territory in King’s Landing, throat slit. Because his wallet had been missing, police told Mother that it was probably a mugging gone wrong. She’d almost been arrested that day, after the way she flew at the officer.

Now she stood at the front of the courtroom, in a blue jumpsuit, long red hair hanging down her back. The Public Defender standing next to her looked like a gnome, short and squat, cheap suit with a necktie that was always crooked. Most days when he came back from lunch, there would be a stain on his shirt, a drop of mustard, a drabble of grease.

She looked so strange and confused most of the time, like she didn’t know where she was or why, and she didn’t much care. She sat woodenly while testimony began, and never reacted, even when a member of the Frey family called her a cunt, and the judge had to clear the courtroom.

I was glad that the facility hadn’t let Bran or Rickon come. They said the cutoff age was twelve. Bran argued that he was mature enough, but relented when I asked him to stay with Rickon, who was far too young to sit still for so long in a courtroom. I didn’t want them to see Mother like this, to hear some of the nasty things the spectators said, who either didn’t realize I was the defendant’s daughter or didn’t care. No one seemed to pay me so much as a passing glance, which left me feeling strange and invisible, like this was a bad dream I could not awaken from.

They never called me as a witness. The prosecution must have assumed they already had an air-tight case, and the defense must not have thought that the word of a fourteen-year old girl would carry any weight with the jury, especially since I was the defendant’s daughter. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to lie.

The defense all but admitted that Catelyn Stark had poisoned the deceased. They claimed mental incompetence, that she was so grief-struck by first the murder of her husband, then her son, that she was out of her mind when she decided to slay someone she believed was responsible for the death of her son. Unfortunately, the jury agreed with the prosecution, that the time it took for my mother to procure the poison and the time it took her to find and break into the deceased’s house and plant the poison, spoke to premeditation, which directly conflicted with the defense that she was temporarily insane.

That made no sense to me, I thought from my seat between a bored reporter and a few law students discussing the case on breaks with a dispassionate air. Was it impossible to be mentally incompetent and at the same time capable of committing heinous acts, “with malice aforethought” as the wolf-like prosecutor told the jury?

I thought for sure Mother would hate this assessment of mental incompetence. The mother I knew would have spit at the jury, railed against the court, condemned them all for daring to judge her. But she sat idly by, looking listless, bored. Now I know she was drugged out of her mind.

The jury barely deliberated for an hour before returning with a verdict of guilty. The judge sentenced her to life in prison, in King’s Landing. Mother barely reacted to the sentencing. She looked right at me as the bailiff escorted her away, but her hollow eyes stared straight through me.

Septa Mordane picked me up that last day, which surprised me. Usually I was collected by one of the polo shirt-wearing staff members, always a woman, and driven back to the facility. Septa gave me a tight smile, the closest thing she had to condolence.

“I have good news, Sansa. You’ve been placed with a home that has agreed to take you and your brothers. We’re headed there now.”


	3. The Lions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and the boys arrive at their new desert home with warm, welcoming Cersei. Sansa likes Cersei, but is far more intrigued by Cersei's boyfriend Jaime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a picset for this chapter.
> 
> Again, please heed the tags. The underage relationship will start next chapter. Warning for smoking.

This drive seemed to take forever. Rickon soon fell asleep in his booster seat, and I seemed to doze off myself. I woke when the sound of the car began to change, the thump of the wheels changing from a smooth  _ thump thump _ to something more rough and gravelly. I raised my head and looked out around me.

The landscape could not look more different than the country I was used to. Father had transplanted us years ago from the cold, chilly north to King’s Landing for his job, but we had settled just outside the city, in the small house that became our home for the next six years. This had been long before Rickon was born, when Bran was just a baby. I grew up with green grass, full, leafy trees, clear running streams. I did not remember well the cold, distant North, though Mother told me often of the harsh, sparse landscape, where Father had met and married her.

The vista that greeted me was practically a desert. I briefly wondered how long I had been asleep, if we had driven all day to reach Dorne. A sandy, empty land stretched on for miles, rocky rather than shifting sand dunes. A few sparse trees dotted the landscape, but they looked thin, stunted, in the dry air.

“Where are we?” I asked the septa, quietly, so as not to wake Rickon. Bran, I saw, was already looking at the view alertly, so maybe he had been awake some time. “Is this Dorne?”

The septa chuckled, but it was Bran who replied. “Dorne is thousands of miles away, Sansa.”

I glared at my younger brother, annoyed at his patronizing tone, but he shrugged his shoulders and returned to staring out the window.

“It may seem desolate, but this is only the beginning of the Dornish Marches. Trust me, if you had ever seen the deep desert, you would think this was a paradise.”

I digested that bit of information, noticing now, as Septa slowed the car down to turn onto a dusty side road, that there were hints of growing things, spiny sage bushes, plants that looked a little like artichokes, thick pale green leaves blooming like rosettes. We must have been driving for hours, judging by the position of the sun, only a hands width above the horizon and dropping fast. The sky was just starting to turn indigo, the horizon gold and orange, as we pulled up in front of a long, low house.

A woman appeared in the doorway of the house, long golden hair bundled up in a messy bun, dressed in a billowing white skirt and an off-the-shoulder cream-colored peasant blouse, trimmed in red lace. Her skin was a rich golden brown, weathered slightly by the sun. She was beautiful, tall and slender, skin glowing as bright as her beaming smile. I watched as she lifted a hand with long, manicured oval nails to push back a stray strand of hair from her turquoise eyes.

I stepped out of the car, hit by a sudden blast of hot, dry air. Looking about myself, I felt like a transplant, like a fern, that was not evolved to survive in this climate.  _ Better get used to it _ part of me said.

It was slightly unsettling though to see the land stretching all the way to the horizon, flat for miles and miles around. I was used to hills and trees, something to break up the horizon. Here, there was so much sky. Looking straight up at the vast, cloudless dome above me, I felt momentary vertigo.

Septa turned to me, “Sansa, bring Rickon. Bran, can you get the bags?”

I felt a little better with a task at hand. I leaned back into the car to begin unsnapping Rickon from his booster seat, who luckily had woken up when we stopped, so he wouldn’t be cranky. I lifted him out, settled him on my hip, and grabbed one bag so Bran wouldn’t have to make multiple trips.

At the front door of the little house, I was met with a wave of cold air. I immediately shivered, goosebumps erupting over my skin. Bran followed behind me, setting down the bags and shutting the door behind us. We stood in the entryway, unsure of what to do next.

To the left appeared to be a sitting room, to the right, a formal dining room. Neither looked used at all, and we couldn’t see where Septa and our new foster mother had gone.

The golden woman reappeared, broad smile, waving one hand at us. “Come on, back this way. Make yourselves at home. I’m Aunt Cersei.”

We murmured our names, and I introduced Rickon. Cersei grinned even broader, showing every perfectly white tooth in her mouth. “You look ready to drop! Come get some iced tea. Dinner’ll be ready in a bit.”

It was easy to relax around Cersei, she had a chatty, friendly demeanor to her that set you right at ease. She was friendly without being ingratiating, and I liked how she talked to us like we were on her level, she didn’t talk down to us or put on an over-sugary tone.

Cersei gave us a quick tour, pointing out the sitting room and dining room. “We almost never use those rooms, just for special occasions.”

Behind the dining room stood the kitchen, and I could see why she preferred this room, bright and open, with several large windows that filled the room with the last light of day. Gleaming wood cabinets stood on two sides, over large countertops. The stove was old and worn, but sturdy. Septa Mordane sat at a round wood table, cleverly carved along the sides. As I got closer, I saw that lion’s heads were carved along the sides, and the feet were shaped as lion’s paws.

I tried to help Cersei with the glasses, but she shooed me away, told me she could handle it. She brought Bran and I glasses of the amber liquid, which was refreshingly crisp and sweet, with just a splash of tart lemon juice. She brought Rickon some milk in a cup with a secure lid.

Cersei spoke with Septa Mordane for a few minutes. Once we had drank most of our tea, and Cersei was satisfied that we were in no danger of collapse, she showed us to our rooms, which stood off a hallway just beyond the kitchen, in the back of the house. She stopped at the first bedroom, and opened the door to a room painted green, with two small beds standing on either side of the room.

“This’ll be for Bran and Rickon. My boys liked dinosaurs, hope you feel the same way.”

Rickon ran in immediately and found a little stuffed T Rex on the bed, that he immediately began to stomp over the bed, roaring as he went. Bran found a shelf of dinosaur books on a bookcase otherwise filled with science fiction and picture books. He took down one book and sat on the other bed, paging through.

“You’re room’s just down here. I’ll be right back with your bags.”

Cersei headed back to the front of the house as I opened the door she had pointed to, and was met with a pretty, bright room painted lavender. A brass bed stood against the wall by the door, with a beautiful soft blue bedspread. A desk stood in the corner by a window, facing the sunset. I stood at the foot of the bed and ran my hand down the soft blanket.

Cersei came in with my bag. “Bran said this one’s yours,” she explained, setting the bag down on the bed. She smiled at me softly. “This was my little girl’s room,” she said. I wanted to ask her what had happened, but she looked so sad, I couldn’t. I knew though that this was a woman who had lost people, just as I had, and I felt very close to her and so grateful for her kindness.

“Down at the end is the bathroom, and next to that is me and your Uncle Jaime’s bedroom. Go ahead and get settled in, I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

She smiled, and headed back towards the kitchen. The septa stuck her head in shortly to let us know she was headed back, but I could call her if I had any concerns. She handed me her number on a small card.

The first night, I didn’t unpack. I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s not that I didn’t like it there, I did. Cersei was warm and funny, and had a fun, straight-forward demeanor that kept dinner light and easy, when it might have been strange and awkward. But it was hard to feel at home here. Besides the dry heat, there were strange gaps in the house. The rooms that once belonged to her children, the “Uncle Jaime” that had yet to put in an appearance.

After dinner, Bran volunteered to do the dishes, while I stepped outside onto the back porch through the sliding glass door behind the kitchen table. No one followed me out, and I sat at the end of the deck, watching the last of the brilliant sunset colors fade from the sky. There was no porch light on, so I sat in growing darkness, letting a few tears trickle down my cheeks. I couldn’t help but wish Arya was there.

The glass door slid open, and a feeble porch light sputtered on, throwing a small circle of yellow light. I hastily dried my eyes as I heard heavy footsteps approach. Not one of the boys, and definitely not Cersei either.

A blanket slid over my shoulders. I leaned into the warmth gratefully; I hadn’t realized how cold it had become. I tilted my head back to thank whoever had brought it, and it was like all the air had left my lungs.

He was tall, though anyone would appear towering to me at that vantage. The porch light was hidden behind his head, haloing his face in soft gold light. He shifted to the side, and I could make out his features: strong jaw, a slight dimple in the center of his chin and on one side of his mouth, full lips, cheeks dotted with stubble. His hair was long and shaggy, golden curls hanging down almost to his shoulders. His eyes were piercing green.

He stared at me as I stared at him, and I wondered how I looked to him: scrawny little girl, tear-stained face, shivering but not even realizing she was cold. Did he see a figure of pity, or just another mouth to feed?

“You must be Sansa,” was all he said, as he took a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. “You mind?” he asked, twisting the hand holding the cigarettes back and forth once, as though shaking a bottle to try to hear how many pills were left in it. I shook my head.

“No you don’t mind?” he asked, trying to draw me out.

I cleared my throat. When I spoke, my voice sounded husky and low. “No, I don’t mind.”

He set a cigarette between his lips, opened the lid of his old-fashioned steel lighter. The flame burned brightly, turning his green eyes molten for the moment he held it close to him. Then the tip smoldered, and he extinguished the flame by closing the lid, making a clean, crisp  _ snikt  _ sound.

“I should quit, just can’t seem to find the time.”

I remember thinking it was strange that he would seek to justify himself to me. Later I learned that’s common among smokers, who will apologize to total strangers about their habit, with that well-intentioned “I know I should quit” offered up with a shrug to excuse their vice. But this felt different, like he genuinely cared what I thought, would have gone away and smoked somewhere else if the smell or the sight offended me. But I didn’t want him to go away.

He exhaled the smoke, tilting his head back to let the smoke curl up to the starry sky, exposing his throat. I remember being intrigued by the landscape there, hard sinewy ridges, the mountain of his Adam’s apple, plunging down to a soft meadow of golden chest hair at the base.

Adult men were wholly foreign to me, not just sexually, but also as people with their own ways and mannerisms and looks. They were as removed from my knowledge and experience as Old Valyria.

He glanced down and caught me staring at him. I should have looked away, he might have even been expecting me to look embarrassed. But Mother always said I had no shame, I would stare at someone, openly and unflinchingly. She called it my artist’s eyes, and she never discouraged it. If anything, she encouraged me to see the world, to really look at the things most people’s eyes just skimmed passed. That was where art came from, she said.

“Don’t talk much, huh? That’s all right. We’ll get on like a house on fire.”

It didn’t occur to me to wonder which of us was the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like it! Angst is coming, so you've been warned. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.


	4. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa starts school and begins to acclimate to life with Cersei and Jaime. Sansa and Bran visit Catelyn in prison. Sansa converts to the Faith of the Seven and learns what happened to Cersei's children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might retconn this a little bit and say that Catelyn comes from Wildling heritage, and not the Riverlands. Hope that's not distracting to anyone, it just seems to fit better.
> 
> I don't really know much about the Seven, so I just kind of mixed it with modern Christian faiths. It won't be a big part of the story.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The first thing Cersei did the next day was make us go shopping for new clothes. The new school year was starting in a few weeks, my first year in high school, which made me feel slightly dizzy to think of.

Jaime took the boys, and I was jealous to learn later that the entire shopping trip took under an hour, and then they went to a movie to make it seem longer.

It felt like hours at different stores with Cersei, trying on dresses (Cersei said pants were for old women), consulting with uninterested sales ladies about whether my coloring was winter or autumn (so different from her own summer palette). Cersei was heart-broken to discover I really didn’t look good in pink, with my red hair and skin that had turned ruddy in the constant sun exposure. She settled for pale pinks, yellows, and lavenders, in sundresses for dressy occasions, tee shirts and shorts for play time, skirts and blouses and a single pair of jeans for school.

Cersei bought me SPF 100 after a sunburn developed later that day like a bad photograph. I all but slathered it on whenever I went outside. She assured me I would tan after the first burn and it wouldn’t be so bad next time, but I was doubtful about that likelihood.

I could hear my mother’s disapproval, sense it floating in the air from King’s Landing. Everything about my new life was in direct opposition to everything she stood for, the elaborate dinners Cersei prepared, eaten around the table after a blessing, under a Live Laugh Love wall decoration. I learned to tune out my mother’s voice, to appreciate what I had, despite how different this life was.

It had been a long time since I had a mother who baked cookies and asked us how our day was, really listened to the answer. School started soon enough, and it was like I didn’t really have time to be nervous about it. Cersei volunteered several times a week at both my high school and the boys’ elementary school, where Bran was in fifth grade, and Rickon in preschool. She was well-known, so soon I had several friends, acquaintances really, who welcomed me to the new school, stopped by my locker to say hi, walked with me to classes. I was suspicious at first, but soon realized their intentions were benign. They were children of Cersei’s friends, and seemed to consider it their personal mission to make me feel as comfortable as possible. And since close contact is the first stepping stone of intimacy, I soon realized that I did think of them as my friends.

I was enrolled in generic classes, history, literature, an algebra class that confused me, although the teacher was so patient and earnest I actually found myself enjoying the class, if not the subject. Art was my favorite class, of course. I wondered who had told Cersei, how she had known to enroll me in the art class. The teacher was incandescent, a beautiful, dark-haired young woman who barely seemed older than the students. She let everyone call her Miss Shae, because her last name was long and hard for Westeros tongues to pronounce. She had a quick smile, dimpled cheeks, and fathomless dark brown eyes. I liked to draw her in charcoals, smudging the edge of the line around her lashes with my smallest finger to capture the shadow of her hooded eyes.

Bran and Rickon adapted to their new surroundings, Rickon quicker to adapt than any of us. He seemed to love the desert; couldn’t get enough of it. Everyday after school, he would talk Bran into playing outside, pretending they were explorers or naturalists. I joined them occasionally, but more often I was stuck in the house completing increasingly harder homework assignments.

It wasn’t like back home. Mother never cared if I finished my homework. She never even asked. My grades didn’t suffer too much, as it was middle school, and I was fairly smart. I was well-read at least, and I could glance over a study sheet a few times before a test and eke out a passing grade. One year my math score was atrocious, and the school threatened to hold me back a year if the grade didn’t improve. So Mother found me a tutor, an earnest eighth-grader who looked like he had never talked to a girl before. He helped me pass pre-algebra, and I gave him his first kiss.

But looking at the formulas and fractions now, all I could remember of my tutoring was how skinny his arms were, how his lips always tasted like mint. He told me later that this was because he always worried he had bad breath, and ate breath mints compulsively. I tried to forget about him and concentrate on the page, but the first question baffled me. “Solve for x.”

I didn’t notice I wasn’t alone in the kitchen until a shadow fell over my page. I looked up and Jaime was there, wearing an old, faded flannel shirt and a pair of ragged jeans. Once again, he eclipsed the light, and when he moved, I was slightly dazzled by the sudden brightness.

“Algebra, huh?” he asked, crossing to the fridge and taking out a beer. I had noticed Jaime kept a few in the fridge, though Cersei never touched them, and they never had any other alcohol in the house. He snapped off the lid, and I couldn’t help noticing his forearms, the wiry strength of them. You could see a vein on his right forearm that started on the back of his hand, ran up his wrist, disappearing into the skin before his elbow. I found that vein fascinating, wondered what it felt like to touch.

He pulled out a chair next to me, and pulled the book over to him. “Let’s see, I must have studied this at one time or another. Ah yeah, here we go. ‘Solve for x’.” He thumped the page with a kind of “x marks the spot” triumph and gave me a small wink.

“Always loved ‘solve for x’. You might have no idea how to find it, but at least you’ve got a goal, right?”

I realized I’d been completely silent, almost to the point of rudeness. I nodded and gave him a small smile. I was always perplexed by his calm and easy manner, the way everything he said seemed to be an inside joke that only we knew about.

To my astonishment, Jaime was pretty good at math. We made our way through most of the questions. I even thought I was maybe starting to absorb the concepts. It was a distant understanding, and the next day I found myself struggling with a new set of math questions, but that temporary illumination was heartening.

The next day, I received my first letter from Mother, which was just a drawing of a young woman staring through bars. The woman looked oddly like me. Maybe it was supposed to be her. Attached was a notice that she could receive visitors.

That weekend, someone from protective services came to pick us up, me and Bran. They decided that Rickon was too young, Jaime said he would take him to a nearby park. Rickon was still asleep when we left. Cersei gave me a hug before I left, whispered in my ear to be brave. I felt my spine straighten at that, despite my affection for her. I was already thinking like Mother again, shrugging off the comforting hand.

We rode in a van for what felt like days, occasionally stopping to pick up another foster kid, who would sit and stare out the window. Another girl was reading what looked like an interesting book, with a wild-looking red-head on the cover, holding a sword. I wanted to ask about it, but she was clearly engrossed, didn’t want to talk. She seemed like she needed the book to distract her from real life. I could relate. Bran spent the whole time reading, too, a science-fiction series that was twice as thick as my math book, and was probably way above his age’s reading level.

The prisoners all wore blue, so we weren’t allowed to. Cersei had dressed me in a lavender sun-dress, and after hours in the air-conditioned van, and then the visitor waiting area, I was shivering by the time we were led into a recreation area. Guards with guns stood at intervals around the fence, but I thought it was nice they let us go outside, let us have the relative freedom of the yard.

I held Bran’s hand tight as we looked for her. The prisoners were streaming through a small gate, and I spotted her on the other side of the chain link fence, waiting for her turn. She had never been very good at waiting, but I remember thinking she must have had plenty of time to develop the habit. She spotted me a second after I saw her, and her eyes grew round, flicking from Bran to me, her expression greedy as only a famished person can be.

When she finally got through the gate and the other prisoners milling by the entrance, she ran to us and snatched me to her, one arm around me, one around Bran, squeezing us tight. Finally she let us go, stared at first me, then Bran hard with her topaz blue eyes. Someone had chopped her hair off, I wondered who, and her auburn locks swung around her shoulders. She looked so beautiful still, like a fine porcelain statue that had taken on the patina of time and mistreatment, but whose beauty still shone through, not as fragile as you might have thought.

She steered us towards the one tree in the yard, glared at another woman who had been standing beneath it, alone, apparently her visitor didn’t come. The woman took the hint and stalked off. That’s when I noticed a bruise under her left eye.

“Don’t worry. They don’t hurt me as much as I hurt them,” she said lightly, catching my stare. She wiped away a few tears with the back of her hand.

“No tears. We’re the First Men, remember? The blood of the Free Folk is in our veins. We show no weakness.”

I nodded hard, dashing away the tears. I examined her, trying to use my artist’s eye to capture everything about her as she sat and pulled Bran into her lap, although he was almost too big for that, anymore. Unlike me, Mother tanned fairly well, and I was astonished to see she had tanned over the last few months, golden skin complementing her copper hair. There was a freckle on her nose that had never been there before. The tan just highlighted the blue of her eyes, made them look like ocean waves lapping against golden sand.

She wore a faded blue work shirt, button-down, and tired no-brand blue jeans that were pale and thread-bare at the knees. Even her ankles were tan, between the bottom cuff of her jeans and her almost blindingly white canvas shoes that she wore without socks. Her hands were weathered, I wondered if they had put her to work.

“Tell me all about where you’re living,” she asked. Bran was silent, almost regressed, staring out at the yard as Mother held him, so I spoke up. Told Mother about ‘Aunt Cersie’ and ‘Uncle Ray’, school, the desert, about Rickon.

“Do you know where Arya is?” I asked Mother suddenly. Bran shook himself out of his stupor, looked up at me, then Mother. She smiled slyly.

“Why would you think that?” she asked, but winkingly, like I had figured out a puzzle and she was proud of my cleverness.

“Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s safe,” she finally added.

Though it had felt like the blink of an eye, the guards were calling a five-minute warning. It was already time to say goodbye. Mother stood up, hugged Bran to her, then pulled me into the suffocating safety of her embrace.

“I won’t be here forever. It’ll take more than this to keep me behind bars. I promise you. I will get out, one way or another. One day you’ll look out your window and I’ll be there.”

I shut my eyes tight, trying to keep a nightmare out or a good dream in, I’m not sure.

“Wherever you go, write to me, And send me drawings, you always drew better than you wrote.” She addressed both of us now, running her hands through our hair, as though drawing power from the connection.

“I think of you all the time, especially at night. I imagine where you are. I close my eyes and imagine I can see you. I try to contact you. Have you ever heard me calling, felt my presence in your room?”

I remember thinking I should have been frightened, but it was oddly comforting. “Late at night. You never could sleep.”

“And neither could you.” I wanted to explain that I couldn’t sleep when she was awake, that it was because of her. But I didn’t have the words yet.

The guards called the end of visiting hours, and after one last bone-crushing embrace, more martial exercise than familial comfort, we were herded back into the waiting room, collected into our group with the other foster kids. We were counted, marked off on an attendance list, although there were only seven of us, then ushered back out to the van, counted once more, again tallied off on the clipboard list, like checked off like a grocery list. Finally, we departed.

On the road, I immediately took out my sketchbook and began to draw her, but I couldn’t capture her eyes properly, not without their stunning blue. I didn’t give up, though. Kept drawing her in different postures and expressions I had seen on her face. The most successful drawing was the mysterious, secret expression she’d worn when speaking about Arya.

That night, I began painting mother in the little studio Cersei had set up for me in the sitting room, once she’d learned I could be trusted not to make a mess. All I had was a cheap tin of watercolors, but I was getting pretty skilled with them. I drew my mother first in wax crayon, a copy of the sketch in the car, on thick paper that wouldn’t warp under the water. Then I colored in her eyes with just a little blue-green, let it dry, applied more blue, let it dry, applied some lighter blue highlights. At the same time I applied a dark brown to her hair, with just a little red, then layered on copper and orange, then finally added red.

It was finished the next morning, and I studied it objectively. It was a good likeness, though I couldn’t quite get the color of her hair right. I had painted it too red, not enough auburn, and the copper highlights hadn’t blended like I’d wanted to.

“That your mother?” Jaime’s rough voice sounded behind me. I nodded, not looking up from the page, adding a tiny black line to the corner of her mouth.

“She’s pretty.”

“She’s beautiful,” I immediately corrected, still not looking up. I thought to myself that Mother never would have suffered this distraction to her art, and tried to make it clear I did not want company.

“You’ll be prettier.”

I looked up at him sharply, like he had said a bad word. “Never,” I replied solemnly.

He laughed at my serious attitude, and I couldn’t help laughing a little too. I looked back at the drawing.

“You just don’t know cause you’ve never met her. I can’t capture it.”

“Nah. Just a different kind of pretty. She looks like she’d take a bite out of you. But you’re a sweetheart. They’ll fall like flies for you.”

I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t just that nobody had ever said anything like that to me before, it was also the realization that this was the first man to know me without knowing my mother. The compliment struck deeper, then, felt like a little pocket of warmth that was all mine. I nestled it deep in my stomach and went back to my work. At some point Jaime left to go back to working on his truck outside.

He was a carpenter, mainly, but seemed to be adept at all kinds of odd jobs. I suspected that at some point he had made his living doing just that, because he could grease a squeaky door hinge, fix a cabinet drawer so it would shut properly, calibrate the ceiling fan so it no longer wobbled. Cersei would always set him to a task, then wink at me, and say something along the lines of how nice it was to have a man around the house. I always thought that was strange, that she would include me in the joke. I learned to giggle along with her, I wanted her to know I appreciated being included.

The other thing Cersei soon included me in was her weekly visits to the sept. Jaime never went, but every week, rain or shine, we were dressed in something nice and parked in a pew in a dim little seven-sided room, where the septon would drone on week after week about the Mother’s forgiveness, the Father’s judgement, the Maiden’s purity, the Crone’s wisdom, the Warrior’s bravery, the Smith’s strength, and the Stranger’s otherness.

This was all as foreign to me as dragonfire. I’d never so much as set foot in a sept before. Father had worshiped the Old Gods, in his way, by visiting a godswood from time to time, and sitting in quiet contemplation. After Father’s death, Mother made no pretense of worship.

There was something calming about the sept, though, and about the hymns that I mumbled my way through. I grew to love “Gentle Mother, Font of Mercy”, and identified with the Maiden. I thought it strange, though, that there was a god that represented both young and old women, but not young or old men. The Father, the Warrior, and the Smith were not the three stages of men, but three separate and distinct types of men.

I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, whispering that this was the effect of the patriarchy, that allowed men to be varied and individual but categorized women by their age, sexual experience, and relative usefulness. For the first time, I ignored that voice. The Seven were just different faces of the same god, of course, so it didn’t really matter what face it wore.

In a burst of teenage rebellion, I accepted Cersei’s offer to be baptized in the Light of the Seven. The Sept said a few words in front of the assembly, sprinkled anointed water over my head, and presented me with a copy of The Seven-Pointed Star. Later, Cersei gave me a golden seven-pointed star on a chain to wear around my neck.

Jaime scoffed at the whole thing, but Cersei made him attend, as well as my christening party afterward, at the sept’s small community space, where they served chalky cake that had been decorated with another star in blue icing.

“You really believe in all of that hoopla?” he asked me seriously, later at the house when I helped him fix a porch board that was weakening.

I shrugged. My response surprised me. I really had thought I believed, but it must have been a weak, rickety belief if it crumpled upon inspection like a water-damaged board.

“I don’t know what I believe. I think I just wanted to make Cersei happy.”

He grumbled at that, but it sounded like a sympathetic noise. He started to hammer the board down.

After the first nail, he reached for a second, which I handed him. “What happened to Cersei’s kids?” I asked tentatively.

He didn’t answer me at first, continued nailing the remaining three nails, until I thought he was never going to answer. Finally, he sat back on his heels.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it. She went through a pretty rough patch after, that’s why we never have alcohol in the house, just those weak-ass beers.”

He looked up at the sky, and I once again admired the architecture of his face. I couldn’t seem to get enough of the hard planes of his face, the coarse stubble that covered his cheeks.

“Her oldest son ran off a couple of years ago. He was a few years older than you, so he would have been your age when he went. He was wild, wouldn’t mind her, got into drugs and alcohol. Haven’t heard from him since. The youngest boy died a year before that from the flu. And the little girl died of snakebite. We drove like mad for the hospital, but just didn’t make it in time.”

“Were they yours?” I asked, then immediately regretted the question. Maybe it showed on my face, because he just looked at me and smiled bittersweet. He had a perfect smile, the dimple on one side of his mouth crinkling up.

“Nah, but I loved em like they was. Except that oldest one, he was meaner than an old dog. I ever see him again, I’ll beat the shit out of him for hurting his mother.”

Jaime stood up quickly and gave me a hand to help me stand up too. He picked up his tools and headed down the back steps, out to the tool shed where he spent most of his time. I turned back to the house, and found Cersei standing by the kitchen table, watching where she couldn’t be seen as easily from outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think, and thanks for reading!


	5. Snakebite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Jaime begin a forbidden affair. Cersei begins to unravel, and everything collapses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the beginning of the Jaime/Sansa relationship, which is underage, so please mind the warnings. Again, not explicitly depicted, but if underage is a trigger for you, please proceed with caution, or skip this chapter entirely.

My next letter from my mother was a stern warning against involvement with the Church of the Seven. I think she would have forbidden it, but maybe she wisely sensed it was better not to make pronouncements she couldn’t enforce. The entire letter was full of patronizing, but well-meaning admonitions. She spoke to me as a child and an adult in turn, calling my need for authority silly, but admitting it was good and admirable to want to know what was out there, to wonder about who made me. She didn’t finish this thought, but I knew what she meant: she had created me, and therefore I should care more about what she thought than any one god or seven gods or many-faced god.

I wrote her back with religious platitudes I only half-meant, intended to annoy her. I wished her the Mother’s mercy, the Father’s forgiveness, the Maiden’s calm. She replied back using very creative and intricate swear words, telling me what I could do with the Mother’s mercy. After that, our letters cooled somewhat, and for a while, we only exchanged drawings and sketches.

My relations with Cersei began to cool somewhat as well. Nothing I could directly point to, especially in front of Jaime and the boys, her words were friendly and sweet. But her tone was pointed sometimes, and anytime Jaime and I were alone together, Cersei found an excuse to linger nearby.

One day, she confronted me, called me into her bedroom on Sevenday after church. The boys had already shed their nice clothes, and run outside to play. Jaime was still outside tinkering in his workshop. Cersei patted the bed next to her, and I sat obediently, knots forming in my stomach.

“You like it here, don’t you Sansa? Like it here with the boys? Making yourself comfortable?”

There was a steely edge to her voice. I heard my mother’s voice in my head, warning me. I nodded.

Cersei nodded, smiled crookedly. “A little too comfortable. I know what you’re doing.”

She leaned forward to pick a shirt up off of the floor, shook it out, frowned at it, dropped it again. She looked at my face again. “Oh don’t be surprised. Trust me, it takes one to know one. I want you to know I’m calling Child Services. It’s all over for you, little dove. I’ll tell them the boys are just fine, cause they are. Little dears. But you. I’ll tell ‘em I can’t handle you.”

“I haven’t done anything,” I tried to explain.

“I see how you are with him. Watching him work, asking him for help with your homework.” She snorted. “As if that man knows anything about math. No, you’re dangling yourself in front of him, and he’s just a man. He sees what he sees and he wants what he wants, and he does the best he can. I got a good thing going here, and I’m not gonna let you fuck it up.”

She stood up, headed toward the door. “Maybe you’ll be more careful next place you go to. Don’t let them see how pretty you are.”

I turned, desperate to stop her. “The Mother would show me mercy,” I said, pitifully.

Cersei made that little derisive snort again. “Well I’m not the Mother, sweetling. Not even close. Pack your bags.”

She had almost reached the door. I knew I had to do something. I channeled every bit of grit and resolve I had ever learned from my mother, and when I spoke, my voice was sharp as dragonglass.

“Jaime’s gonna know what you’re doing. He’ll resent it.”

That finally got her attention. She let go of the door handle, turned around. Her face was skeptical, but a gleam in her eye gave away her interest. I was trained to see such details. She tried to scoff, but her voice was wavy, uncertain. “What are you talking about.”

“He’ll know why you’re sending me away. And he’ll resent it.”

“You don’t know what in the seven hells you’re talking about.”

“I know men don’t like women who try to control them.”

She froze at that, and I knew I had her, didn’t stop to let her regain control. “He loves you. He loves the boys. He loves me like a daughter. If you send me away because you don’t trust him, he’s going to hate you for it. I have a home here, I would never do anything to screw that up.”

She considered what I said, her face uncertain now. “You swear on the Mother that you don’t have feelings for him?”

“I swear on the Seven, there’s nothing going on. There never will be,” I lied.

Cersei nodded. “We’ll see.” She opened the door and motioned with her head for me to leave.

My words must have cut more deeply than I realized. She never brought up Child Services again. But she watched me as closely as before. I never spent any time alone with Jaime anymore, citing increase in homework as my reason for staying inside all the time, often in my room. Sometimes I sat at my desk, staring at him out the window, as he worked on the truck, shirt sticking to his chest as he sweated through the summer nights. I watched him from afar, and wanted him more than ever.

What is it about being warned against something that makes you want it more? Rationally, it made no sense. He was old enough to be my father, and I was barely old enough to be called a maid. But my awakening had come quickly and powerfully. I began to stay awake at night, in my little bed, wondering what it would be like to be with a man, how a man’s hands would feel on my skin, between my thighs, on my budding breasts. Was it wrong to feel the way I did?

I didn’t know. I’m sure the septon would have told me, condemned me for having immoral desires, but it didn’t feel immoral. It felt as natural as breathing. And I felt powerless to resist.

Well, not powerless. If anything, I felt more powerful than ever before. Like standing on the top of a tall building and feeling the urge to jump, I knew so many people’s fates were in my hand. That should have terrified me, but in a way, it was electrifying.

My opportunity came midway through the semester. A few girls in my class, daughters of one of Cersei’s friends, approached me about forming a club to study the wisdom of the Seven-Pointed Star. I agreed immediately, knowing the excuse it would give me to be late coming home. Cersei brought it up at dinner that night, how proud she was of my diligence.

We met at the library for the first time that week, in one of the private study rooms. Jeyne, the ringleader, laughed at me when I pulled out my copy. “You don’t really think we’re going to study that shit, do you?”

I grinned. “So what are we going to do?”

“Whatever we want,” she shrugged. “As long as we all agree that if any of our parents ask, we were right here, yeah?”

We all agreed and left early. I walked the fifteen minutes to the suburban development where Jaime was working, installing cabinets in new, 300 thousand gold dragon houses where rich families would live with their 2.2 kids and 3.5 baths. I tried to stay out-of-sight, but the construction sites were fairly deserted. Most of the workers were on the newer houses, the ones that were still bare bones. Jaime worked in the more finished houses, and he worked alone, I knew that from our talks in his workshed.

So I walked until I found his truck, and heard him hammering inside the house. I knocked on the front door, and heard him stop momentarily. “Up here,” he hollered, then the banging started up again. I walked in, walked up a short set of stairs, my heart in my throat.

He was standing by a window, in what was probably going to be a kitchen someday, assembling a cabinet. He didn’t turn around.

“What do you want? Thought you’d gone home for the day.”

Eventually, he turned around, when I kept silent. He spotted me and dropped his hammer on the worktable, turned back to the window, like maybe if he didn’t look at me, I’d vanish and he wouldn’t have to make this decision.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

I walked towards him, slipped my arms around his waist, pressed my face into his back, inhaling his musky, wood-chip smell, tinged with cigarette smoke. He felt so warm and solid against me, and I could feel his muscles tense beneath his shirt.

“Do you want me to go?”

“Yes.”

I heard my breath inhale sharply, but it felt like I was leagues away. She loosened my grip, but at the last moment, he grabbed my hands and held fast, pulling me back against his back.

“No.” For several moments we stood that way, then he turned suddenly, and put his arms around me.

After that, we were no longer able to be in the same room together. The air between us crackled like the dry heat, when the smallest strike of lightning could start a fire that would destroy miles and miles of grassland. In fact, wildfires were breaking out all over the countryside, getting nearer and nearer.

It was like that in the house now. I would stay in my room, and Jaime would stay in his workshop. If we had to be together in a room, we avoided each other. As if we really thought that would fool anyone.

Cersei became more and more unstable. I wonder now why she didn’t ever follow through on her threat, really get rid of me, now that our affair was becoming more and more apparent. I think maybe she couldn’t handle the reality, even predicting it hadn’t prepared her. She ignored the signs in front of her, and I soon realized she started drinking.

She hid it fairly well, only drinking in her bedroom. If Jaime knew, he never told me. We never spoke about Cersei or the boys, when we met at the construction site while I was supposed to be studying scripture. We clung to each other, in the short time we had together. I didn’t know how something that felt so good could be so bad, or hurt so many people. I soon found out.

One morning, I woke up to the crash of glass. I emerged from my room, clad in my thin nightgown, and saw Bran’s head peeking out from behind his door.

“Stay in your room,” I mouthed. He gave me a knowing glance, something oddly similar to some of Arya’s expressions, where she humored me but made it perfectly clear she knew exactly what was going on. When did he get so old? When did we all grow up?

I crept towards the sound, and found Cersei in her room, smashing pictures of her children. I rushed in to stop her, forgetting I wasn’t wearing shoes.

“Stop it, what are you doing?” I grabbed a frame from her and cried out, then hobbled to the bed. I looked at the damage, just a scratch really, but bleeding plentifully.

“Fuck. What you doin’ in here?” Cersei slurred. “Shit, you don’t need that shot, do you?”

“No, I got one a few months ago.” All three of us saw a doctor as part of our adoption into the foster care system, and got caught up on all of the vaccinations Mother kept putting off.

Cersei grabbed a wad of toilet paper, handed it to me. As the bleeding stopped, she remembered she was mad at me.

“Bleeding all over my fucking carpet. You ruin everything, or just my fucking life?”

I bent over and picked up a picture of a golden-haired boy. He had sweet blue eyes and a wicked smile, full of dimples and conniving.

“My Joff. You remind me of him. He never minded me, broke my heart, did everything he wasn’t supposed to do.”

I wanted to retort, ask when I had ever not obeyed her. She asked me to go to church, I joined the seven. I got decent grades, did the dishes, watched the boys when she asked. But then there was the biggest indiscretion, the one that hung over the house like a storm cloud, the one that couldn’t be named, or it would send the glass house crashing down. I set down the picture on the bed, carefully hobbled out of the room.

Bran came into the bathroom, helped me clean and bandage the cut. He never said anything as I cried, pretending that my tears were because of the pain in my foot, rather than the weight of the emotional damage I was inflicting on myself and everyone around me. He didn’t say anything until he was throwing away the paper bandage wrappers, washing his hand.

“Can’t you just stop? For me? For Rickon?”

I dried my eyes, looked at his earnest face. “I’ll try.”

We did stop. But it wasn’t enough. We’d already pushed the boulder too close to the edge of the gorge.

On the first day of the week-long holidays for the Feast of the Father, Cersei, in an unexpected fit of motherly feeling, decided to take all of us kids to a movie. Feeling I would be in the way, I offered to stay home. I pretended to have a final Seven-Pointed Star study meeting, and a final homework assignment I needed to complete.

“You got assigned homework over Father's week?” Cersie asked, hand on her hip, expression slightly suspicious.

“No, I’m behind in my history class. I can make up an assignment I missed, but I have to turn it in tonight.”

“Well, if that scripture class is too much, you should quit it. You get all the spiritual guidance you need every Sevenday.”

I nodded. “You’re right. I’ll tell them today.”

Cersei looked relieved. “Good. Get in, I’ll give you a lift.”

That was an offer I hadn’t expected, but couldn’t turn down now. I put on my shoes, and let Cersei drop me off, watching me until I went inside. For an hour, I sat and read, worked on some homework, to get ahead for the next week. Eventually, though, I packed up and headed home. When I arrived, Jaime was just stepping out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist as he was about to head back to his and Cersei’s bedroom.

We stared at each other, my eyes drawn involuntarily down his dripping chest, to where his slender hips disappeared inside the towel. We hadn’t been together in weeks, but I could feel the desire between us, crackling like static electricity. He turned without a word and walked into their bedroom, firmly closing the door behind him.

I walked into my room, shaky and close to tears. As I sank onto the bed, I thought how far away from my mother’s values I really was. I couldn’t imagine Mother sitting on her bed, feeling helpless, crying silent tears over a man who was with another woman.

Eventually, though, hunger made me emerge. I had heard the front door close, and thought I could quickly grab something from the fridge and take it back to my room.

Jaime was in the kitchen, holding two pizzas. He held them up.

“Got them delivered, for dinner, so we don’t have to cook. Where’s Cersei?”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “She took Bran and Rickon to the movies.”

Jaime nodded, set the boxes down on the table. Ever the good girl, I went to get plates and paper napkins, setting the table for five. Jaime moved around me, getting down a class for water. We seemed to manage avoiding each other, despite never looking at one another, the way the opposite poles of magnets do nothing but repel.

Jaime sighed, standing over the sink. “We can’t do this anymore, Sansa.”

“Do what? We’re not doing anything. We’ve stopped.”

“Cersei doesn't know that.”

I shrugged, refusing to believe that some things can’t be fixed. “Then tell her.”

He chuffed a bitter laugh. “I don’t think that will help.”

“It has to. We’ve stopped, it’ll get better. Just forget it ever happened.”

I glanced over and saw Jaime shaking his head.

I picked at my slice of pizza, with a glass of sickly sweet carbonated soda. Soon, the kids and Cersei returned, Bran and Rickon happy and excited to see the slices of cheesy, greasy pizza that I would never let them have, back when I was in charge of cooking. Even Cersei looked happy, or at least, content. We all ate dinner as a family for the first time in months, Cersei had nothing more than water to drink, and it really did seem like we could put the past behind us.

The Feast Day came, and Cersei went all out. A roast turkey filled with stuffing, figs and sweet potatoes in a honey sauce, fresh bread, pies filled with spiced apples. We ate all day, and played games honoring the Father. Cersei was even looking forward to going to the sept that Sevenday, which she hadn’t attended in weeks.

The next day, everything went wrong again. Cersei started the day drinking, glasses half full of what appeared to be water but turned out to be gin. She was testy and irritable, and I took Bran and Rickon outside to play. Jaime stayed in the house for once, since he didn’t have work to use as an excuse, and she followed him out to the workshed when he tried to escape.

We finally came in around dinner time, I hid out behind the shed with my sketchpad, to stay out of the sun. Bran and Rickon, brown as berries, ran around all day, Bran going in at noon to get food to bring out to the others, as well as a few bottles of water.

For dinner, we heated up plates of leftovers, but there wasn’t a peep from the back of the house.

After dark, we sat in the living room and watched TV quietly, before finally going to bed. As soon as I switched off my light, I heard the argument begin.

“I know what y’all have been doing. I’m not stupid, Jaime.”

I pulled the covers over my head, hoping that only I could hear, since my bedroom was closer, but it was a very weak hope. I couldn’t hear any of Jaime’s responses, as he seemed to be speaking in a low voice, trying to keep Cersei calm.

“You like that jailbait, huh? Never picked you for the type. Fucking disgusting.”

After a few moments, “Don’t give me that shit, I know it’s still going on. When she said she went to study the ‘Light of the Seven’ at the beginning of the week? I got a call from Jeyne’s mother this morning, there was no study group this week. She’s been lying and going out to that construction sight to fuck you. All kinds of people have seen her walking.”

I tried not to cry, clutching my hands in fists beneath my pillow, so hard I made little bloody half-moons cuts on my palms.

“With our luck, she’s knocked up, and won’t you just have fun explaining that to Child Services? How that child is going to have a baby?”

I cringed. Of course, I’d been diligently taking my moon tea. But the thought of Bran and Rickon hearing this talk.

I sat up as my door cracked open and Bran slipped in.

“It’s not true,” I tried to protest, but I’d never been a very good liar.

“I think you should go,” Bran interrupted.

“What?” I asked, confused, wiping away tears.

“She’s unstable, San, she could hurt you.”

“No, she would never-”

“I should just take care of her now,” Cersei’s voice sounded, louder than ever. “Imma go in there and clean her clock-”

Cersei was right outside my bedroom door, though there was a struggle, sounded like Jaime was there, trying to hold her back. I jumped out of bed, ran to the window and pushed it open. Just as the door opened, I shoved Bran through.

“No, you go-” he was protesting, holding onto the window sill. We stopped and stared up at Cersei, holding a small revolver in her hand. The shot fired, just as I was trying to shield Brann’s body with my own. I felt a small blossom of pain bloom in my left shoulder and sank to the floor as Jaime tackled Cersei. I held my shoulder, trying not to cry, relieved she had shot me and not Bran. That was when Bran fell beside me.

He had been facing out of the window, his back to the door, his face turned towards me. The bullet had nicked my shoulder before hitting him in the spine. I leaned over him, tears flowing freely now.

“No, no, no,” I kept repeating, softly, as though speaking too loudly would worsen his wounds.

I looked up towards the door. Jaime had wrestled the gun from Cersei. He stood staring at us. Cersei was gone.

“Call an ambulance,” I said, shaking all over. I applied gentle pressure to Bran’s wound with a t-shirt to stop the bleeding, not wanting to jostle his fragile nervous system.

I looked up to see Jaime handing me the cordless phone. He turned and started to leave the room.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

Jaime looked above my head, out the window. “I have to go, I can’t be here for...I have to go.”

He turned and walked out, past Rickon sobbing in the hallway. I heard the door open and close. I learned later that they had both run, though Cersei was so drunk, she didn’t get far.

“Sansa, please.”

I dialed 911, though I don’t remember what they said. I sat with Bran until they came, holding his hand, sobbing together.

I remember saying I was sorry, repeating it over and over like a prayer. The paramedics came and took control, one ambulance for him, then another for me when they realized I had also been hit. I remember lying in the back, with that familiar numb feeling taking over again. It was a relief, slipping into that numbness like a warm bath. I let it, and the morphine, drive away my guilt, my shame, my pain, my consciousness, until I slept the blissful, unfeeling sleep of the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like it! Next few chapters are going to get depressing as fuck. I will make sure to tag specifics, but jut know that it's not going to be happy. There will be a happy ending though, if that helps!


	6. Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Bran recover in hospital from their gunshot wounds, and Sansa finds out what is next for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shorter chapter. Warning for depression, victim blaming, and pain medication use. Next chapter will be longer.

I swam to consciousness through a fog of pain and confusion. The first thing I remember was the beep of the heart monitor, and a woman in pale blue scrubs standing by my bed, with a cart of medical supplies. I was turned over, either they didn’t know I was awake, or didn’t care. Then something was being pulled off of my arm. I opened my eyes and saw they were unwinding a piece of fabric from around my left shoulder.

“Just changing your bandage, love,” the woman told me. I glanced down at my shoulder, to see it was a twisted mess of pink flesh and crooked, ugly wire. I hissed when she began prodding the wound with a cotton pad, dabbing it with some kind of antiseptic that stung.

“Where’s Bran?” I asked, turning my head so I wouldn’t have to look at the wreckage of my flesh.

“He’s just a few doors down.”

“Can I see him?” I asked, trying to choke back the tears.

“Not just yet. You gotta rest, and he’s not ready for visitors.”

It was like everything hit me in a rush, the argument between Cersei and Jaime, Cersei bursting into my room, the gunshot.

“But he’s alive?”

I saw her head turn towards me sharply. She didn’t seem like the type to get emotionally involved with her patients, she had a hard face that matched her rough hands. But she let out a sigh.

“Yes, he’s alive.” She finished bandaging up my arm, bustled about officiously for a few moments, bundling the waste into the trash, checking my IV and vitals. “I’ll be back in a few hours to take out that IV. Try to rest.”

I lay back against the pillows, but minutes after the door shut, I sat up and made my way cautiously to the door, IV trailing on a rolling rack. I listened at the door. All quiet.

Cracking the door open, I saw a group of nurses towards the end of the hall. I waited until they entered a patient’s room before I slipped out, holding my hospital gown closed behind me. I was freezing, but I had to find Bran, couldn’t rest until I knew he was alright.

The first door had no name on it. I opened the door a crack, then shut it quickly when an old man in the bed turned toward me. The next door was a woman, about Mother’s age. The next door, I saw a young boy lying motionless in bed. I slipped in and shut the door behind me.

He was asleep, and he looked so perfect and peaceful I burst into noisy tears. He had a strange tube in his mouth. Everything was so strange and frightening. I reached for his hand, but accidentally caught my IV tube on the bar on the side of his bed that prevented him from rolling out of bed. Blood seeped under the plastic adhesive that covered the IV needle.

I tried to ignore the pain, reached out to him with my right hand instead, stroking the hair on his head and sobbing quietly to myself. I don’t know how long I stood there, pain and guilt warring for control of me. Eventually the nurses found me. I learned later they had been doing rounds, as the evening shift traded with the overnight. A kindly looking nurse took me back to my room. I remember she was very pretty, and she also had red hair.

She took out my IV, applied some antibacterial ointment to the gash I had created in my hand when I half-ripped out the needle myself. She bandaged it up, and put me back to bed. She seemed very young to me, only a few years older than Robb, probably. She stayed by my bed a while, stroking my hair, telling me everything would be ok. Lying. It was the most wonderful lie anyone has ever told me.

Later, she returned with my nightly dose of pain meds, and I swept away to sleep on a flood of the delicious, familiar numbness.

The next day, the doctor came to see me and my guilt only doubled.

  
  


Bran was paralyzed, and in a medically-induced coma. He had just come from surgery when I’d seen him. They operated to remove the bullet, but the doctor didn’t believe Bran would ever recover use of his legs.

He told me all of this information as calmly and clinically as he could, while I sat stoic as a statue. It was impossible to take this information in. To be the cause of my family being now further split apart, as I’m sure we would be, to be the one to cause Rickon so much heart-ache and trauma, that felt worse than I had ever imagined. But to be the reason my brother would never walk again?

I began to lay in my bed, day and night, responding only when nurses came to change my bandage, and bring me the pain medicine I began to crave. When a nurse threatened to tell the doctor to cut off my pain medication if I didn’t eat, I sat down and gorged myself on cold meatloaf until I thought I would burst. She looked at me queerly, but returned nonetheless with my medicine.

I had been in the hospital three days when Septa Mordane arrived. She sat at my bedside and looked at me very sternly. I wished to sleep again, wished for that endless black nothing that held no feeling, no pain. But she forced me to look at her.

“Sansa, I have a very serious question to ask you. Did Jaime harm you in any way?”

I refused to meet her eyes. I had never been a very good liar. “Where is he?”

“Answer the question, child.” I refused. “Look at me.”

Her voice was so ferocious, I couldn’t help myself. Her kind eyes were hard and stern. I thought of my mother, pictured her steely defiance, and learned to lie. “No, Septa. He never hurt me.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. But delivered as innocently as I could muster, it apparently fooled the septa.

She leaned back, face still stern, but her eyes softer, kinder. “Did you have an inappropriate relationship with him? A sexual relationship?”

“No, Septa. He was like a father to me.”

Her mouth pinched. “Why would Cersei say these things?”

I shrugged, then winced in pain at muscles that had still not yet healed. “She was drinking a lot. She was paranoid. I was in a study group for the Seven-Pointed Star.”

Septa nodded. “She mentioned that. She said you skipped meetings.”

“Just the one last week. I just wanted to stay home, but I didn’t want her to be upset that I didn’t want to go to the movies. I probably should have just told the truth.”

Septa Mordane looked a little mollified at this. “You should always tell the truth, child.”

I nodded my head, tried to look contrite. “What will happen to us?”

Septa nodded shortly. “I’m afraid Rickon has already found a new home.”

It felt like passing out for a moment, my vision turned dark, and I heard nothing the septa said for a few moments. Then she was patting my hand.

“Sansa, Sansa, can you hear me?”

I shut my eyes and turned my face away from the septa. She tried to pat my arm, but I wrenched it away.

“Sansa, he had nowhere to stay. He’s with a nice young family now, they have two other boys around his age. He’s settled now. He’ll be happy soon.”

“He’ll forget all about us,” I sobbed. Then the wild thought occurred to me that perhaps that wasn’t the worst thing for him. My sobs stilled, as though shushed by that horrible thought.

“The doctors say you can leave in a few days. I’ve found a home for you. It won’t be easy, but you’ll get through this.” Septa Mordane stood, hesitated at my bedside. I stared at the wall, refusing to look at her.

She finally heaved a deep sigh. I wonder now what she thought of me, a liar and a homewrecker. Did she condemn me for a fornicator, or was there pity in her heart? I think it was the latter.

She laid a gentle hand on my mostly-healed shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sansa. I wish life had been more kind to you and your brothers.”

Then she left.

Two days later, I was dressed, and allowed to see my brother. I sat beside his bed, and refused to allow myself to cry. He looked so small and frail. He still had tubes coming out of him, but he held my hand, and I took comfort in those blue eyes, just like Mother’s. But the rest of his face and coloring, was all our father’s influence. I refused to cry, bit the inside of my cheek each time I was tempted. It was time to grow up, be more like my mother. We sat in silence, like we had nothing more to say to one another.

“I’m so sorry, Bran,” I whispered when an orderly came in to tell me it was time to go.

He looked straight up at the ceiling. “I think I always knew this would happen.”

I was confused, stood to go when the orderly urged again. Then Bran grabbed my wrist, her grip stronger than I’d thought possible.

“I mean it, Sansa. It wasn’t your fault. This was always going to happen and you couldn’t have stopped it. I don’t forgive you; there’s nothing to forgive.”

He lay back again. “I love you. You’ll always be beautiful to me, no matter how many scars you have.”

I looked at the orderly as Bran fell back into uneasy sleep. The orderly shrugged.

“I wouldn’t get too worked up. He’s on some pretty strong pain medicine.”

I couldn’t help shivering as the orderly took my things down to the front entrance. I finally relaxed my jaw and realized I had bit the inside of my jaw raw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's going to be pretty depressing for a few chapters here. Thanks for sticking with me!


	7. Suburbia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa goes to live with Lysa and Petyr, expected to clean and look after their son Robyn. The beautiful woman next door enchants Sansa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for wh*re slur at the very end. Other than that, no new warnings needed yet.

The house the septa drove me to was ordinary enough. Ordinary and ugly, but that was almost comforting. I knew now I didn’t deserve a nice house like Cersei’s, that domestic happiness just wasn’t worth the risk. Maybe if my situation at this new placement started out broken and wrong, it couldn’t get worse.

The house was somehow garish and plain at the same time. It was painted a vulgar magenta, perhaps in a bid to stand out from the rest of the cookie cutter houses. Aside from the color, it was identical to every other house on the block, with the exception of the house immediately to the right, from my perspective on the sidewalk, looking at the magenta monstrosity. The house next door looked like it was built in a different era, the ‘20s maybe, with a wide wrap-around porch, a flowering magnolia tree in the front yard, and a regal cast iron fence that guarded the perimeter, making clear in no uncertain terms the boundaries of its expanse.

I dragged my gaze from the elegant house. Of course, there was nothing for me there. I followed Septa Mordane up the front walk, and stood at the edge of the concrete slab porch as the septa rang the bell.

The woman who answered the door was plain and harassed looking, though she didn’t look cruel or drunk, so that was a plus. She had a hard face, not old or unpleasant, but somehow pinched and sharp. High cheekbones, a pointed chin, unblinking pale blue eyes. Her hair was a kind of strawberry blond color that clashed slightly with her eyes and brown eyebrows.

She looked me up and down for a moment, then smiled wanly to the septa and invited us in. A small boy, about two or three, peeked at me from behind her legs, with a mop of dark brown hair and inquisitive blue eyes.

Septa introduced us. “Sansa, this is Lysa Baelish. And her son Robyn.”

I nodded, still holding my suitcase. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” I looked down at Robyn and smiled shyly. “Hey.”

Neither acknowledged my greeting. Lysa pointed to the hallway. “Your room is at the end, on the left. Take Robyn and get settled in while the septa and I talk.”

_ Talk about me _ , I thought wryly, wondering what the septa would tell her. I held out my hand to Robyn, but he clung closer to Lysa. She leaned over and gently disengaged him, set him on his feet and pushed him towards me.

“Go on, she won't bite.”

I took his hand, and pulled him away from where the septa and Lysa were already sitting, beginning to speak in hushed tones. He came reluctantly.

The room was simple, plain, but painted a pretty, robin’s egg blue. I wondered if it was his room too. I didn’t see any toys or boy’s things.

“Is this your room?” I asked, looking down into his small face. He stared up at me silently.

“Where do you sleep? Where are your toys?”

After a long pause, when he still hadn’t answered, I shrugged and carried my suitcase to the bed. I unzipped it, but didn’t start unpacking yet. Instead, I just picked through it, looking at what they had packed up for me. Mother’s sketch books were still there, at the bottom, with a load of clothes (both clean and dirty) piled on top. The money and jewelry were still stowed away in the lining of the suitcase, where I had sewed them while we stayed at the purgatory of the group home before Mother’s trial. The brush and the shawl were there, safe where I had folded them into a stack of T-shirts, but the white robe was gone. It had hung on the back of my closet, but the orderly who packed for me must have thought it was Cersei’s.

I pushed back the dull grey curtain of the window, and looked out at my view of the back yard, short, stubbly grass covering the lawn, brown at the tips from the summer heat. A tricycle sat abandoned by a small concrete path that led from the backyard to the front of the house. And if I leaned far to the left, I could just see the house next door. The backyard was well-shaded by leafy green trees, old and sprawling, and another magnolia tree on the other side of the fence. I could see the limbs had been roughly hacked off where they extended over the walkway, into Lysa’s yard.

“Sansa, come out and say goodbye to the septa,” Lysa hollered from the living room.

I emerged, Robyn tottering behind me. Septa Mordane asked me to walk her to the car. As soon as we stepped outside the heat and humidity hit me, almost as hot as it had been in Dorne, but damp. Dragging in a breath of air felt like drowning. I’d thought King’s Landing summers were bad, but nothing had prepared me for the swampy humidity of the Riverlands.

“I had to tell her about your previous placement, but I didn’t tell her all of it. She knows your previous foster mother started drinking, then accused you of having an affair with your foster father. I cannot express to you how serious that is. That must never happen again, do you understand?”

I looked into her serious grey eyes, and nodded. I’d never actually admitted what really happened, but the septa seemed to know all of my secrets.

“This is a good family, they’ve had foster children before. She’ll expect you to help out around the house and look after the boy.” She hesitated, looking over at the magnolia house next door.

“Stay away from that house. Lysa doesn’t like the woman who lives there.”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say, of course. If she had let things run their course, I might have adopted Lysa’s dislike, or more likely, my foster father’s ambivalence. But a whispered warning in an imaginative young girl’s ear, I became secretly obsessed with the woman next door, before I’d even met her.

  
  


It would be a relatively long time before I met her, though. First, I met my new foster father, and if septa had been worried about me becoming romantically involved with Petyr Baelish, she needn’t have worried. He was a bland, blank-faced man. He greeted me with a smile when he came home from work, then immediately went down to his workshop in the basement. I never found out what he did down there, never even visited the basement, except to change out laundry, and every time, the door to the workspace was shut. He wasn’t mean or abusive, just disinterested and quiet. He hardly spoke a word at dinner, and soon enough, I came to ignore his presence in the house.

Lysa was very clearly the head of the household, although she was always making a show of deferring to her husband. Whenever someone would come to the front door, selling something, she would pretend like she needed to ask her husband, then mutter under her breath as soon as the door was shut about how pushy salespeople should be shot.

I spent the first week at home with her, the very end of the term break. I’d spent one week with Cersei, two weeks in hospital, and now the final week with Lysa and Robyn. It was hard to believe my freshman year of high school was half over, and that I would be turning 15 in just a few months.

For the first week, I learned why Lysa had really decided to take on a foster child, why some families specifically ask for a teenager: who wouldn’t want to get paid to have free help around the house? The first night, Lysa left me in charge of Robyn as she left for her book club, dressed up in a frilly sundress, wearing entirely too much jewelry and perfume.

“Dinner’s on the stove, just heat it up. Make sure he’s in bed by 8.”

Robyn whined and clung to her leg, but she shook him off gently, kissed the top of his head, and then she was off. Petyr was ensconced downstairs, so there was nothing else to do but turn on the TV, to something childish and educational, and set him down in front of the set while I tried to draw. I started with the house next door, relying on half memory, half imagination to add the bits of furniture on the porch, the way the magnolia branches draped over the driveway and yard, the large white blossoms, heavy and drooping towards the ground like delicate ladies, fainting from the heat.

Soon, though, Robyn grew bored with the show, and I had to put away my sketchpad and entertain him. I hid the pad in my room, so Lysa wouldn’t find the sketch, and found his room, right next to his parent’s. He showed me his stuffed animals, one after another, wordlessly, though he did giggle when I pretended to “attack” him with a stuffed bear, gently brushing the bear’s fuzzy fur against his face and neck, tickling him until he protested.

Then, I got to spend the rest of my term break cleaning. First the kitchen, then the bathroom, vacuuming all the rugs, washing all of the towels and bedsheets. Thankfully, she thought lawn maintenance was best suited to boys, so she hired a few local kids to come mow the lawn and trim the trees. They stared at me whenever they could, if I was exiled outside with Robyn to “play”, as I often was whenever Lysa’s friends came over. I learned to stare right through them, and they quickly lost interest, calling me a stuck-up bitch under their breaths and snickering.

Babysitter, scullery maid. As soon as Lysa learned I knew my way around the kitchen, I got to add cook to that list of titles. But I didn’t mind. It felt nice, after Cersei and Jaime, to know exactly what was expected of me, to be given tasks within my abilities, like 1) scrub the bathtub, and 2) make lunch for Robyn, rather than 3) fill the hole left by three lost children, or 4) keep a woman sane.

At the end of the first week, the first letter from my mother arrived. She didn’t say “I told you so”, not in so many words, but advised me to savor unhappiness, to keep it inside me until it rotted. “No one becomes an artist by choice.”

I slept with that letter, decked it in tears.  _ Mother, why didn’t you warn me? Why didn’t you warn me about the world, and keep me close, keep me safe? _

  
  


School started the next week, and I was overwhelmed, learning another new school, its layout and cliques and taboos. Lysa took pity on me that first week, did all the cooking and most of the cleaning, letting me get acclimated. She really wasn’t a bad person. If I complained, or asked if I could put off some chore until the weekend, she almost always relented. She was also the first person to teach me about makeup, what she called “the womanly arts”.

She and some of her friends sold those door-to-door makeup products, although she rarely cold-called anymore. She had a base of clientele who had been buying from her for years, and they had parties in the living room almost every weekend. The first weekend, she introduced me to her friends, and made sure I knew my job was to keep them plied with lemonade and keep Robyn out of the way.

By the third party, when they had gotten bored of the newly released products, one of them had the idea to make me over. Lysa looked at me with new, interested eyes, scanning my face. They all took to the new project like it was a mission, pulling me to sit in the dining room, discussing color palettes and if I was more of a North or South coloring. The red hair was both admired and decried, as it apparently made color choices more complicated, and my delicate reddish eyelashes were lamented, “in desperate need of plumping” one woman declared.

They primed my skin and painted on foundation, blushed and browed, lined and plumped and glossed. Someone even decided to plug in a hair straightener, and soon, the smell of my crisping hair filled the room, along with the bitter tart of lemonade and the chalky smell of face powder. Soon, I was finished, and Lysa proudly showed me my reflection in a hand mirror.

I gazed in shock and mingled horror and admiration. How was it possible to see something so familiar and foreign at the same time? My freckles had been spackled over, my eyelashes long and black. My brows were thick and dark as well, apparently no one had products to replicate light brownish red facial hair. In the place of my natural rosy cheeks, two stripes of hot pink blush filled the hollows, swiping up the outside of my face, almost to my hairline. My mouth was loaded with two coats of exaggerated brownish-red lip gloss, sticky and tacky feeling. To top it off, my hair, dry and stiff, straight and dull, and slightly bushy, it’s volume exaggerated so badly I looked like a scared animal puffing up in self-defense.

Their work done, the ladies turned away to other matters, leaving me like tissue paper on Sevenmas day, abandoned on the floor after all the presents were opened, waiting for someone to collect them and throw them away. I slipped out eventually, checking on Robyn to make sure he was still napping, before going into the bathroom to take a long hard look at myself.

The fluorescent light made it look even worse, the skin on my face several shades darker than my neck. I got down one of Lysa’s makeup remover wipes and quickly removed the mess, though the mascara and lip gloss resisted my efforts. I spent the rest of the day in Robyn’s room, sketching him while he slept, working on my lines.

When everyone had left, I emerged. The humidity had made quick work of my hair, bringing out the natural wave, and Lysa took in my bare face in a glance.

“Didn’t you like it?” she asked, not ungently.

I shrugged. “It just didn’t look like me. No use pretending.”

She considered, then nodded. “That’s good advice. I’m glad it didn’t go turning your head. You’re a pretty girl, but you don’t want to be worried about that nonsense just yet. Go outside and play, I’ll fix supper.”

Relieved to be given an unexpected afternoon off, I hurriedly carried my sketchpad outside. It was a sticky, sweltering afternoon, but I had my shorts and tank top on, plus the sprinklers were on. I ran through once, after depositing my sketchbook on the picnic table, but only once. With that humidity, even that quick sprinkling of water would take hours to dry. While it felt like a relief in the moment, it wasn’t worth it to have to sit in damp, cloying clothes for long. I twirled a spare pencil into my hair to hold it up on my neck, and sat still in the shade, the best antidote to the heat.

I sat in the shade of our oak tree, on top of the picnic table, drawing the trees. I had almost gone through a whole sketchbook in the three weeks since my arrival, finding inspiration in the lush summer foliage, a welcome sight after months in the barren desert. When I finished the oak, I turned back to the magnolia, trying to capture the dark, almost black wood of the trunk, contrasted with the delicate white blossoms, almost the size of my hand. As I sketched, I heard a car door slam, almost as close as the front driveway.

It was the woman next door, shutting the door of a sleek black convertible. I forgot to wonder how she could drive with the top down in this heat, mesmerized instead by her long bleach blonde hair, braided up in an elaborate braid, the ends loose and trailing nearly to her waist. She wore a long, diaphanous wrap skirt, a deep, jewel-toned purple, a short-sleeved, black top baring her midriff, a cross between a blouse and a T-shirt. She wore black, oversized sunglasses, which she propped up on the top of her head as she popped the trunk of her car, removing several shopping bags. From that distance I couldn’t tell exactly what color her eyes were, though I got a vague impression of light coloring. I painted her several times in watercolors over the next month, eyes ranging from bright blue, to green, to violet, as I vainly attempted to remember what color her eyes were.

She never looked at me, or towards Lysa’s house in general. She locked the car, and headed into the house through the backdoor. I noticed she wore a bangle of dark wood on her right arm, as well as dark leather sandals that strapped around her ankles.

I was entranced, sitting still for several minutes after she was gone, wondering if she would reappear. It felt like she had appeared in answer to my silent question, my internal struggle of wondering what I wanted to be, what kind of woman I wanted to become. After a day of looking after Robyn and cleaning and being painted by Lysa’s friends, the little dark house under the magnolia trees beckoned like a cool breeze. That was what I wanted to be, a woman free and unfettered, who came and went as she pleased, who didn’t seem to care that her grass was getting long, or the phonebooks that had accumulated on the front porch. How did you become like that?

When I went inside a while later, when the sun dipped down low and the bugs came out, giant, man-eating mosquitos who apparently savored my taste, Lysa was suddenly in a foul mood. She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “That bitch is back.”

I glanced at Robyn, playing unconcernedly on the kitchen floor. “Who?”

“The bitch next door. The whore.”

I poured myself a glass of ice water, pressing the cold glass against the back of my neck. I could already feel the tug of new tides at my skin, pulling me on to new and unfamiliar lands. It was exhilarating and scary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooo, I'm excited about writing Daenerys!! Hope you're enjoying it, and thanks for reading!


	8. A Woman of Means

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa gets to know her next door neighbor, Dany, who earns her living as a companion to rich men. Sansa thinks Dany is the epitome of all she wants out of life, until a tragic accident befalls her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: warnings for a fairly explicit depiction of a sexual encounter between Sansa and a schoolmate. Warning at the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next for fairly graphic depictions of dog bits.
> 
> Picset: 

I’ll admit I became obsessed with the woman next door. All through the school term, I never learned her name. Lysa would only refer to her as the whore, or the B-I-T-C-H if Robyn was in the room. I barely saw her either, after that one afternoon. She seemed to only come back to the Magnolia House (as I had begun calling it in my thoughts) rarely, sometimes just for an afternoon before leaving and then we wouldn’t see her again for weeks.

I should have been glad for her absence, as her presence only riled Lysa, and sent her in a foul mood that lasted days. Besides, I didn’t have time to mope over mysterious next door neighbors.

School wasn’t particularly difficult, but it took up a lot of my time, as did looking after Robyn. Lysa had him all day, when I got home, she’d usually ask me to keep an eye on him so she could get a little rest, or she might run to the shops, though I think she mostly visited her friend down the street for a glass of wine. She always came back giggly, in a good mood, so I didn’t mind watching Robyn.

He was a sweet boy, though insistent, and needy. He didn’t like not being the center of my attention, had never learned the admirable trait of playing quietly. He always needed to be attended, not because he would get into trouble, but because otherwise he would whine and turn sulky, which meant a crying-fit was imminent. I learned to put off my homework until after dinner, when Lysa was generally in a better mood and would watch him while I finished my schoolwork.

By then it was time for bed, and another day passed with no time to do more than daydream about the mysterious woman next door.

It’s amazing how quickly time passes when life is boring and routine. It felt like the term had hardly begun before it was half-over, then it was time for my name day. Lysa and her makeup friends threw me a little party that was earnest and sweet. Lysa gave me a pretty dress for a present, that was surprisingly mature, not the little-girl stuff she normally bought me, but short-sleeved and clingy, silvery and embroidered at the hem with sequins. She did up my makeup before the party, subtly this time, just eyeliner and mascara, a swipe of lipstick. Everyone commented on how grown-up I looked.

Lysa gave me another gift at the party, a brand new sketchbook, as I had resorted to doodling in the margins of the old one, covering up old sketches. Petyr gave me a new set of colored pencils and added a set of charcoals to my collection, no doubt picked out by Lysa, though he did give me a quick, preoccupied, fatherly hug at the end of the evening that surprised me by bringing tears to my eyes.

“How does it feel to be fifteen?” Lysa asked me, and I went shy, as I usually did when put on the spot. Teachers could never call on me for an answer, I went tongue-tied and my answers were stumbling and nonsensical, even when I knew the answer.

“About the same as it did to be fourteen, right?” Petyr asked. I nodded with a smile, eager to have an answer that made sense.

The truth was it felt really different to be fifteen, like I was leaving something behind. But what? Surely not childhood, that had been pretty well stripped from me in the desert, both childhood and innocence. The truth was, I felt sometimes like there was something bad inside me, and I felt it especially strongly then, when everyone praised me and wished me good luck for the next year. There was always a feeling that I didn’t belong here, with a nice family, with what Lysa called “decent people.”

She always said that in a pointed way, implying that there were decent people and people who were decidedly not decent. Those people took a number of different forms, whether it was the young dark-skinned couple that moved in across the street, or the gay news anchor that replaced her favorite evening news anchor. She never said anything out-right bigoted about them, but suddenly she didn’t like that show anymore, they didn’t care about the “decent” people watching. And she just thought there was something suspicious about that new couple, even though they looked really sweet and had a cute little girl, just starting to toddle. Lyse watched them from the front window, eyes spindly and mean.

“Not decent, parading that little girl around like that,” she proclaimed.

I had my suspicions. I knew I wasn’t decent either. And to hear her talk, maybe I didn’t want to be.

  
  


As the year ended, I became aware that I had got a reputation at school for being a little weird. Not that I minded. My attitude towards high school had very much become one of survival only. I can’t remember if I ever had dreams of being popular, I’m sure I must have. I was always fairly well-liked in my school before- before everything went to shit. Despite my lack of designer clothes or family connections, I seemed to be that girl everyone liked, everyone’s acquaintance but maybe no one’s true friend.

After my fiasco with the scripture study group, I had decided other people my age were not to be trusted. Besides, everyone already knew each other, and it was too late to try to insinuate myself in the cliques. I ate lunch alone, often outside with my sketchbook, and I was always either drawing or reading.

Boys started to notice me after my name day. I got invited to the big year-end dance, though I declined. It didn’t seem like the kind of milestone meant for someone like me, with a felon mom and a thirty-year-old former love, though I could form a mental picture. Lysa fussing over me, doing my makeup, Petyr taking pictures of me and the boy, a fairly good-looking blonde boy, me wearing my silvery dress Lysa gave me for my name day.

But I didn’t want to go to a gym with a boy I didn’t know and sway awkwardly to decades old music while watched, and silently judged, from the sidelines by my teachers. I told him my foster mother wouldn’t like it, and that seemed to solidify my place as an outsider. Few people made any more overtures.

The only other students that paid any attention to me were a group of boys who started hanging around outside. This wasn’t that unusual of an event, though the summer heat kept most of the other students in doors. This group was different, three of them, a smaller boy with pale hair, a portly boy with dark black hair, and the one who appeared to be the leader, with sandy brown hair, tall and skinny.

I became aware of their attention on one especially sweltering day, when I was the only one outside in the little courtyard. I had settled with my back to a tree, sketchpad on my knees. My hair was pulled up, and I had a big canteen of ice cold water next to me. Whenever I got too hot, I would take a swig, and run the cold metal over my forehead and neck.

I looked up once to see the sandy-haired boy staring at me from the picnic table they sat at, the other two joking about something and not paying much attention to us. He had striking blue eyes, and a serious expression. He kept watching me as I swallowed my gulp of water, recapped the canteen. His eyes roved over my bare legs, and I remember thinking I should have been repelled by that calculating gaze, but I wasn’t. It was exciting.

After a moment, he had the grace to look embarrassed, and lowered his eyes to the grass at my feet. He’d been caught looking and seemed to expect me to be offended or annoyed. When he raised his eyes to mine again, I was still staring back, watching the way his hair fell over his eyes. I would draw it later, the hesitant gesture juxtaposed with his bold eyes. It was an expression I’d never seen before, and it intrigued me.

School let out next week, and I had two months off before the start of my sophomore year. Now that I was available to Lysa full-time, with no homework to preoccupy me, I got to look after Robyn all day and most of the night as well. Lysa reasoned that since I didn’t have school, and if she took care of most of the chores and cooking, I could reasonably be asked to look after Robyn.

“Got to pull your weight, kid,” she replied to my silent, stubborn expression. “It’s the same no matter where you go. No one gets something for nothing.”

My mother seemed to agree with my current surroundings, writing that maybe the responsibility would ground me, and of course, she felt that misery was the only way to shape true artistry. “Your sketches are already improving, no more Uncle Bob [her nickname for Jaime] and wistful desert vistas. You draw like I do, like a prisoner. Trees scrabbling to grow through concrete, birds in flight, a woman you think has a perfect life.”

I rolled my eyes at that letter. Once again, she was seeing her own life, not mine. I had never drawn a bird, and my plants were flourishing and life-giving, not struggling to live. Would she ever really see me, not as an extension of herself?

Without school to anchor me, I became listless, despairing. Bran wrote me from time to time, and I had just gotten another of his letters, slightly short on details, but the news was generally good. He and Rickon had been taken in by a cheerful young couple who couldn’t have children of their own. Bran had gotten used to his wheelchair, and physical therapy was going well. Rickon was recovering from the shock and had stopped asking for Sansa every day. They were happy, as happy as could be expected. I cried myself to sleep after reading that letter, as I hadn’t done since I’d arrived at my new placement. The longing returned, to sleep, to escape my guilt and my unhappiness, escape the rotten thing inside me.

But I wasn’t permitted such a luxury as sleeping in anymore. The next morning, Robyn woke me up, having learned that I was far more likely to actually get out of bed and get him his cereal, pay attention to him. After breakfast, Lysa, who had finally gotten up and was sitting in the living room with her coffee, suggested, though it had that steely undertone of an order, that we go to the park. I packed my backpack with my sketchbook and a snack for Robyn, and we headed out, dressed in shorts and tank tops that still felt like too much clothes, every inch of my bare skin slathered in sunblock and my hair wrapped up in a scarf.

We walked down to the park, just a few blocks away that felt like miles. Unsurprisingly, the park was deserted, as any last morning chill had long since been burnt away by the sun. It wasn’t even midday yet, and it felt hotter than the desert ever had, the humidity cloying and suffocating. Lysa must be trying to kill me, I thought. Robyn yanked at my shorts, and made his hand gesture signaling he wanted to be picked up. How he could crave contact on such a hot muggy day was beyond me, but I acquiesced and picked him up, propping his weight on my hip.

Then, a scent wafted through the air, a bitter, musky smell I recognized. I’d caught Jaime smoking something that had that same tangy bite, back in his shed once. He refused to let me try any, but I sat in the shed, hot-boxing until I get a funny, light-headed partial high. He made me promise not to tell Cersei, and sprayed me all over with some fabric freshener until I no longer smelled like skunk.

Fuck it, I decided. I wanted to feel that way again. I stalked through the park until I found the source of the smell. In a corner of the parking lot, the three boys from school were gathered around a car, the doors open and some kind of emo music pouring out, heavy and depressed. They looked up, startled at first, relaxing somewhat when they recognized me.

“You’re the girl from school,” the short blond boy called out. “The one Harry’s obsessed with.”

He and the stocky boy laughed at that, and Harry, the sandy-haired boy, didn’t bother refuting it, just shrugged. I liked that, it seemed so cool and dispassionate.

“You seemed interesting,” he said evenly. I wondered if this was staged, to make it seem like he didn’t really care. Even the word choice seemed deliberate, “seemed” instead of “seem,” like maybe I was no longer of interest to him. I should have been dismayed at how well it worked on me.

“Cool car,” I commented, sarcastically. It was an old rust bucket, definitely a hand-me-down, maybe even a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down.

“Cooler than yours,” Harry shot back. Fair point.

“Whose is it? You can’t be old enough to drive.” Deciding witty repartee was not my forte, I decided to stick to observations.

“I’m sixteen,” the stout boy volunteered. “Got held back last year.”

I nodded like that was totally cool, still trying to match Harry’s disinterested mood. I glanced at the joint held between his fingers, wafting it’s pungent smoke into the air.

“Could I get some of that?” I asked, deciding to just come out and ask, instead of beating around the bush.

“Twenty an ounce,” Harry replied.

The other two boys watched this verbal volley, silently observing. I shook my head. “Don’t have twenty.”

“What do you have?” Harry took a deep drag, held in the smoke, then let it out smoothly, He didn’t cough. I recognized the power move for what it was. He might think he held all the cards here, but I was sure I had something he wanted.

I jostled Robyn from one hip to the other, didn’t move to readjust my tank top when it pulled down slightly at the neck. Let him look. “What do you want?”

He seemed to weigh my statement in his mind, wondering how much he could ask for. “Blow job,” he ventured, and it was like the air had shifted. The other boys turned toward me, eyes wide.

The first offer had been made. “Hand job,” I countered. The eyes volleyed back, like spectators at a tennis match. Counter offer.

“Only give you half a bag for that,” he clarified. I nodded.

“And I get to kiss you and touch your boobs,” he added. I shrugged. It didn’t bother me.

“Someone has to watch Robyn,” I said. “You have to hold him or he’ll start crying.”

The short blond held out his hands. “Give him to me, I got little brothers.”

I handed Robyn off, and the blonde headed off the tears threatening to bubble up by swinging Robyn onto his shoulders, started giving him a ride around the car. Harry led me to a little building, some kind of shed, surrounded by bushes. We would be secluded there.

“I’m Harry,” he said, holding out the joint. I took it, inhaling and coughing inelegantly, unused to the sharp sting. It wasn’t good pot, even I knew that, but it was a relief to feel that dopey, tranquil state glaze over me. I handed the joint back. He took another hit. He had slender wrists, long fingers. I liked that.

“Sansa,” I told him, wondering how I looked through his eyes. He offered me the short joint again as he fumbled in his basketball shorts. I took a quick hit, having to hold the joint carefully to avoid burning myself as Harry pushed down the elastic band of shorts and underwear to expose his cock.

He took back the joint and rubbed it against the stucco exterior of the shed, then took my hand and guided it to his crotch. His eyes were dark now, his lids heavy and his breathing heavy. He was already hard.

My hands closed around his shaft, precum already leaking out, lubricating my grip. Harry leaned towards me, kissing me as I pistoned my hand up and down.

Kissing Harry was nothing like kissing Jaime. His lips were dry and motionless, though I was grateful he didn’t try to use his tongue. He seemed to sense my disinterest, because after a few kisses he moved down to my neck instead, pulling my tank top down so he could grab at my chest, massaging one of my small mounds as I worked his cock. He started moaning against my neck, and I could tell he was getting close.

He twisted his body away from me, though he kept his face buried in my neck, and jerked in my hand as he came. I saw the flash of his come sprinkling on the leaves of a bush. He thrust into my hand a few more times, then was still. I let go of him, wiping his fluids off onto a section of clean leaves.

He let go of me then, and we both rearranged our clothing, me pulling up my tank top while he tucked his soft cock back into his shorts. He pulled a half bag out of his pockets.

“You want some papers?” he asked, pulling out his little packet of rolling papers. I nodded and he pulled out a dozen or so sheets of thin paper, folded them in half and handed them over with the bag of pot.

“You have a boyfriend?” he asked, eyes roving over my skin. He had that stoned, slightly glazed over expression, so his eyes felt more like the brush of a butterfly’s wings than the sharper, invasive looks he’d given me before. The stupor of his orgasm had heightened the effect, turning his expression almost affectionate. I shook my head.

“Well, if you ever need anything, I’ll be here most days during break. Gotta get out of the house, you know what I mean?”

I nodded. I slid my backpack from my shoulder, just one shoulder to keep the heat from trapping between the plasticy fabric and my back, and slid the baggie and papers into my pencil bag. We walked back to the other boys, who kept their eyes curiously averted, like we were still half-dressed or something. The shorter boy set Robyn down, who came running over to me. I picked him up and thanked the boys for watching him. I nodded to Harry and he nodded back, that choppy upward jut of the chin that boys that age thought made them look tough.

I smiled to myself as I walked away. I had apparently gained a new acquaintance, and also possibly a dealer/boyfriend, if I wanted it.

The next day, Lysa and Petyr decided to take Robyn to his grandmother’s. No one offered to let me tag along, but I got the feeling I wasn’t welcomed, and didn’t resent not being included. Lysa framed it as a day off for me, and I smiled, admitted it would be nice. They were going to stay the night, so I would have the whole house to myself all night.

I spent the morning in bed, then went outside to roll a joint and smoke. The Baelishes had a shed at the back of the property for the lawn mower and other yard equipment, so I went in there, rolled a bad joint, loose and crooked. I was pulling bits of pot out of my mouth everytime I took a hit, but I didn’t care. I smoked almost the whole thing and got way too high.

Back in the house I ate bologna sandwiches and watched children’s television, giggling and loopy. I tried to draw, but my hands didn’t seem to want to work. My sketches came out cock-eyed and unintentionally abstract, proportions all wrong.

Towards evening, I wandered out onto the front lawn with a glass of lemonade, the kind that came from a powdery mix, the color radioactive urine. The overly air-conditioned interior was actually starting to make me cold, after getting used to spending my days outside. I sat with a sharpie, playing connect-the-dot with the freckles on my legs and arms, inventing new constellations. The Unicorn, the Joint, the Magnolia Tree. The concussive thud of a car door opening shook me out of my reverie.

I looked up and suddenly locked eyes with the neighbor. She was looking at me with an amused expression on her face.

“Hey,” I called, thrilled to have a chance to talk to her. I could tell, even from that distance, that her eyes were violet. They glanced towards the house apprehensively.

“They’re not here,” I supplied and she looked relieved.

“They left you all alone?” she asked. I nodded.

“She calls me whore,” her voice danced across to me again, light and lilting.

“She’s a bitch,” I called back, then clapped my hand over my mouth. I’d never said that before, and I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t still been a little stoned. The beautiful woman laughed, not a giggle, but a hearty chortling sound.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Sansa.”

“I’m Dany. Would you like to come over for dinner? Seems a shame we should both have to eat alone.”

I nodded eagerly. Dany held up her hand and waved me over. I came running, like an eager puppy.

The inside of her house was like another world. I couldn’t believe she lived in the same neighborhood as me. The inside of her house was somehow cool and dark, though I didn’t feel any air conditioning running. Instead, slow fans spun overhead. Dark wood blinds covered the windows. Was it that or the shade trees that made the house feel cooler?

The floor was also covered in dark wood that occasionally creaked or groaned underfoot. Dany kicked off her shoes by the front door, and I followed suit, although I was a little embarrassed of my dirty feet. I carefully avoided the fine rugs that covered the floor in the living room.

I followed her back to the kitchen, greeted by cool charcoal tiles underfoot, more dark wood furniture, including a wood table with elaborately carved chairs. Even the appliances were fashionable, a big steel gas stove and a black fridge with a roll-out freezer drawer underneath. She opened the fridge and contemplated the contents.

“Lemonade or ice tea? The tea is sweeter, but the lemonade is fresh.”

“Lemonade, please.”

She smiled and I felt my stomach flip over. “Good choice. That’s my favorite.”

There was something so enchanting about Dany. I learned her full name was Daenerys, which was too beautiful for this sad suburban world, it sounded like the name of a tropical storm, or a rare orchid whose blossom opened only one every one hundred years. Sher served the lemonade in crystal goblets that probably cost more than everything I owned. She cooked up the steaks she had brought home. Both the bag and the thick brown paper the raw meat had been wrapped in screamed of luxury. I didn’t even want to think of how much they cost, and wished the paper wasn’t soiled by raw meat, or I would have smuggled it home for drawing. She demurred when I said I didn’t want to steal her dinner away, but I was sure it had been expensive.

“I wouldn’t have eaten it all on my own, any way,” she explained with a smile.

While she cooked, I told her my story, omitting no detail, not even my relationship with Jaime. She didn’t comment or seem too shocked. I thought maybe she wasn’t unfamiliar with inappropriate relationships. When I told her about the boy in the park, though, she seemed surprised.

“Why did you do that?”

I shrugged, surprised by her reaction. Wasn’t she a prostitute, or - what did they call it in that evening news piece?- Sex worker? Did she really think it was so shocking? “I wanted the pot, and I wanted to see how it would feel.”

“How did it feel?” she asked softly.

I shrugged again. “Not bad. Not great.”

By now we had finished our dinner, steak cooked beautifully rare, with a side of fresh leafy greens dressed in a tangy raspberry vinaigrette. After, she served huge chunks of exoctic fruits decked in a light honey sweet syrup with a touch of sour lime juice. She sprinkled a little red powder on top of one of the pieces of melon, and had me try it. The red powder was spicy, and the spicy sweet combination was deliciously invigorating.

After Dany cleared the dishes, we sat on the screened-in back porch with tiny cups of coffee dark as the Stranger and strong as the Warrior. Out there, another ceiling fan swung lazily, creating a steady breeze that freshened the air. I admired Dany from where she sat with her feet kicked up. Her dress, red with black flowery designs on it, wrapped around her body, tying at the waist and perfectly accentuating her figure. She wore a thin silver chain around her ankle, with little feather charms attached, and her pale blond hair was immaculately braided, just like before.

I opened my mouth to ask her how she made her money, but thought better of it. She seemed to notice my hesitation.

“Did you want to ask me something?”

“Why does Lysa call you- that?”

Dany’s mouth twisted in amusement. “I don’t have a full-time job. I don’t have a husband. I have... boyfriends. I give them my companionship, and they pay me well. Lysa is… old fashioned.”

I snorted, and then Dany was laughing too. I remember thinking she laughed like a man, not worrying how it looked or sounded. She just threw her head back and let the sound burst forward. Sometimes her hand fell to her stomach, like she had to try to keep it all in, what she was feeling.

Shortly after coffee, I left to return to the Baelish house. After all this time, it still didn’t feel like mine. I wandered through the rooms, thinking how ugly and common it was. I’d come to realize, eventually, how simplistic that kind of feeling was. But at that moment, I couldn't help comparing how the Baelishes lived to Dany’s life. How could I not?

  
  


During the school break, I slipped over to Dany’s house every chance I could. I loved to listen to her talk about her life, her lovers. She wouldn’t give me too many details about them, but sketched general characterizations: the older widower, the middle aged investment banker, the younger man who looked like the very embodiment of the Warrior.

“He’s your favorite,” I guessed, rewarded with a sideways smile.

“I don’t have a favorite,” she claimed, but I knew better. Her eyes changed when she talked about him.

“And they don’t mind...each other?”

She shrugged. “They know how it is. The Warrior has asked several times to make me exclusive, but he can’t afford it yet.”

“Does he love you?”

That earned me a level look, like I had asked about the Others or something. “He’s in an arranged marriage. They don’t love each other, but their families are big deals. It’s just not in the cards. Besides, I like my life. I get my freedom, and a little male companionship when I want it. I get to travel, live how I want. I wouldn’t give that up to be Mrs. Stuffy-Family-Name.”

She lived extravagantly. I learned later that she had a housekeeper/assistant who went grocery shopping for her once a week, when she was in the country. She had just returned from Braavos with the Warrior, that’s why the grass had gotten scraggly. Now that she was back in the country, a young man regularly turned up to cut the grass with his shirt off. I watched him while I babysat, wondering what he would be like as a lover.

I couldn’t stop wondering that, about almost every man I saw. I became friends with Harry, and while we never engaged in further sensual activities (Dany started giving me money for the weed, asking me to wait and make a decision about exchanging sex acts for money or drugs until I was older) I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to kiss him again, if I wanted his hands on my breasts again, which had begun to fill out in the last few weeks, if he would want to make sure I enjoyed sex, or if he would selfishly take what he wanted.

Dany told me that was perfectly normal to wonder, it was just my hormones. I sent my mother sketches of Dany, the complicated sweep of her braids, the long lashes around her expressive eyes, the way she looked when she danced.

“You’ll attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention, won’t you? I wash my hands of you.”

I stared at the words of the letter Mother sent me, along with my pictures, what looked like blood dotting the sketches. I burned my mother’s words, but tucked the drawings away. I wouldn’t let her poison another relationship, another home.

  
  


Then, like the summer winds, Dany was gone. No word, no note, just gone. Her car was in the driveway, covered in a vinyl wrap like a baby in a blanket. The grass grew long again. Time seemed to stretch away in front of me. I fell into the same ennui I’d felt at the beginning of break, my life a boring routine. Wake up, Robyn, pot Robyn, Robyn, Robyn, pot, dinner, sleep. Rinse, repeat.

Always in the back of my mind, wondering what Dany was doing. Was she having fun? Which man was she with? Were they making her laugh? Had she thought of me, even for one moment?

I slipped outside one night, wanting time away from the Baelishes. It was so hard to care about their petty little problems, to watch them shovel food in their mouths, watch late night talk shows. No matter that I had done the same things just a few weeks ago, my eyes had opened to a new life and now the old one was ash in my mouth. I’d had a peak of Dany’s opulent independence, and now I couldn’t be happy with normalcy.

I had another reason for walking on my own. It had been a whole year since Mother’s trial, only a few months short of a year since the last time I’d seen her, in that blue jumpsuit, her hard eyes looking for any sign of weakness, ready to rip into my soft parts, trying to harden me to her level of tensile strength.

I walked around the house to the front, making sure Lysa wasn’t in the window to spot me. I stood outside the gate, staring at Dany’s house, so quiet and ghostly in the moonlight. A freak drop in Barometric pressure had caused a pocket of mist to descend on our quarter of King’s Landing, and I welcomed it, felt like a tragic figure from classic literature, standing on the moors, morning the loss of her innocence. It was so much easier to feel sorry for myself in such a picturesque setting.

I turned from the house as a small figure emerged from the mist. It was a small white dog, the tips of its ears wouldn’t have come up to my knee. I didn’t recognize it, but rubbed my fingers and thumb together, trying to lure it over.

“Hey little guy,” I called.

A second dog appeared out of the mist, a brown, wiry looking mutt, and then a third, a blue-eyed husky, descended from wolves. The bitter taste of fear bloomed in my mouth.

The brown dog showed his teeth, and the husky growled. I didn’t know what to do. I decided on false bravado, forgetting that dogs have older, baser instincts. I must have smelled like fear.

“Go on!” I yelled. They showed no signs of moving. I decided to back up, which was probably a mistake, given my earlier show of force. The little one lunged for my legs. I screamed. All three dogs lunged for me, jaws snapping at my bare legs and arms. The husky jumped and was able to latch onto my left cheek for just a moment. I was in danger of falling, my legs twisted in my sandals, but the gate to Dany’s house was behind me. I fell on it and managed to remain upright.

All the time they were biting me, I could only think: _this is how it always was. This is how it will always be_.

I heard shouts, and looked up to see the man from across the street, the one Lysa had been suspicious of for no good reason other than his skin, was chasing off the dogs. The woman approached me, her face twisted in fear and horror.

“Where do you live, honey?” Her eyes flickered to the Magnolia House.

I pointed back to the Baelish house, tears flooding down my cheeks as I slid down the fence, my clothes catching on the iron curlicues. Porch lights turned on up and down the street. By the time Petyr came out and stood on the front lawn staring at me, the kind young woman had already sent her husband for kitchen towels soaked in cool tap water. She dabbed my stinging wounds gently.

“Hold on, honey. You’re daddy’s coming.”

The irony of that statement stung almost as bad as the ropes of open wounds that wound up and down my arms and legs. I let my head fall back against the fence, confusing the poor woman with my laughter.


End file.
